


An Ounce of Perception

by stateofintegrity



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-03-13 17:05:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 31,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3389537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Legolas and Gimli begin to perceive one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One: Moria

**Author's Note:**

  * For [determamfidd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/determamfidd/gifts).



**An Ounce of Perception**

**(against an age of obscure)**

**Part 1: Moria**

 

Grief did not bow the shoulders of the descendant of Durin. Though the long dark of Khazad-dûm had begun to breed misgivings and dread in his heart, he carried himself as a dwarf lord of old, as a cousin of kings. Yet, in secret places, Gimli began to accept that the long silence that had followed the establishment of a dwarven colony in these halls was the silence of the grave.

Ahead, he heard the voices of elf and man mingled in the flute-like tones of elven speech and the muscles beneath his unbowed shoulders tensed and drew tight. He did not desire to know what the elf spoke, though he could imagine that his words disparaged Khazad-dûm’s echoing vaults and drowned caverns. He glanced around at the rest of the company. The hobbits, merry as children despite the shadow, laughed and talked together, seeking to bolster the spirits of the Ringbearer. They seemed to take no note of the conversation being carried on in chirps and bell-like chimes. Gimli wondered if Frodo might understand some of the words. Bilbo had famously been interested in tongues; Balin had said that the old hobbit even knew a few ceremonial phrases of Khuzdul. Gimli closed his owl-bright eyes; perhaps it was the sound of Khuzdul that he longed for, perhaps the elf’s words pained him because they reminded him that he was alone in the very midst of the Fellowship.

“I wish you would speak to him. The words might not come amiss from your tongue. I would not trouble Gandalf with it as he seeks to lead us through this vast dark.”

Aragorn did not have time to answer the elf. The wizard had dropped back and now stood between them, his staff shining gently in the dim. “Speak truth, Legolas Thranduilion,” said Gandalf the Grey, amusement brightening his eyes like the fireworks for which he was famous among the Shire Folk. “And say that you would not speak to me because you fear that you will not like the answer that I have to give in return.”

The changeable eyes of the elf flickered and in clear light a faint blush could have been perceived on the high elvish cheekbones. “You think me wrong to complain? It is unsettling to be so openly the object of mistrust. And so often.”

“Legolas claims that Gimli oversees each of his watches,” Aragorn explained. “When the hobbits watch, or one of us, he sleeps.”

“I am many years his elder,” said the elf. “And though I was part of the guard that let Gollum escape, I can yet be trusted to stand watching in deep darkness, even in the halls of dwarves!”

Head lowered, Gandalf made sounds of amusement into his beard. When he spoke, it was in the common tongue. “As quick to kindle as the birch that they love are the tempers of the woodland elves. Or, perhaps, such kindling may only be accomplished by dwarven hands, which are said to be able to call flame from bare stone at need. You misunderstand the actions of your companion, Master Elf.”

Legolas tossed a quick glance over his shoulder. If Gimli heard Gandalf’s words then he gave no sign, frozen before some shaped column threaded through with veins of metal. Looking between the elf and the Istar, Aragorn saw the firstborn master himself to hear where he had gone astray. His proud chin was lifted and he looked the prince that he was, his white and grey garments flashing about him like storm light.

“What secret ways of the dwarves have I misread?”

The wizard might have taken offense; Aragorn half expected him to rap the elf’s shoulder with his staff. But Mithrandir’s eyes were warm and fond, the skin around them creased. This time, he spoke in the elf’s tongue. “Master Elf, your ears are keen as well as curved. Have you not heard our dwarven companion speaking to the stones as we seek our way toward the light of the outer world?”

“I have,” Legolas admitted. “The rocks seem to call to him and he answers, sometimes in his own tongue and sometimes in the common speech. Quartz he has crooned to, and deposits of unpolished gems. If he had the tools, I think he would unearth them and show their sparkling faces to such light as finds its way to this place.” One shoulder jerked upward in a shrug. “What of it? The dwarven love of jewels and metal is well known.”

“It is not only gems that he speaks of, when he thinks no one is listening to him,” said Gandalf. “‘An elven cry as a warning,’ he said to himself when we bedded down to sleep. ‘No. This place must wear upon his thin shoulders. It would pain me if terror came upon him in the dark.’”

Aragorn tilted his head to the side, his face taking on the very look of the Ranger listening for some far off thing. “He worries for you, prince of Mirkwood. He is concerned about how you fare in Moria. Even you cannot speak against him for that.”

Legolas did not share his view. “It is foolish. I am as much a warrior as he! And I did not ask for his protection!”

Gandalf held the elf’s eyes with his and Mirkwood’s prince seemed to diminish under the power of that gaze. “You did not ask, but it is given. You might find courtesy enough to answer so rare a gift.”

Isildur’s heir nodded in agreement. “Yes. That you might, Legolas.”

Behind them, the hobbits continued to chatter, making observations on each chamber they passed through and on each figure carved in stone. Gimli stalked on alone and silent. The elf’s eyes flicked between the wizard and the Ranger. “What would you have me do?”

“You might offer courtesy,” the man suggested. “And withdraw your mistrust. You spoke of being unsettled by it – how must he feel, ever under the pall of your suspicion? All others of our company have received kindness and trust from you in equal measures. You might treat him the same.”

The elf wanted to protest, to say that he made no distinction between the mighty Boromir and the gentle Samwise who had wept to send the pony Old Bill back to Rivendell and the dwarf. His tongue lay still behind his teeth because he knew it was a lie. In his mind, Gimli had ever been one of the Naugrim. “I… I will try to be less harsh. More courteous.”

“Good,” said Gandalf. “He grieves, Master Elf. A word of comfort might mean much.”

****

Though wise enough not to rouse a wizard’s wrath by ignoring his advice, Legolas did not act immediately. Instead, as the march took them deeper and deeper beneath the earth, he thought back to Rivendell. Elven memory was clear and keen and he saw himself as he saw Gloin’s son for the first time. An echo of Thranduil’s scowl rose to his lips. Other memories followed. He had overlooked the dwarven representative. When he had finally deigned to see him, he had done so only to quarrel with him, until Gandalf had intervened at the gate. Then they had worked together, dwarf and elf, to listen to the stone. So, when Gimli’s eyes next glinted in the dark, Legolas cast his voice across the darkness between them like a length of silver rope. “You watch with me again, Master dwarf.”

“I would watch _for_ you if you wished it,” came the deep voice, rumbling even in its softness. “These hours in the dark must seem overlong to you, and wearying.”

Legolas had learned that Gimli saw better in deep darkness than he and he forced himself not to bristle and read an insult into the words. “I thank you, but I would know why you make this offer to me alone.”

Gimli stood at that and crossed the stone floor to sit beside the elf. “I would not wake them,” he explained and Legolas felt shame flash through his breast. Gimli seemed to be almost apologizing for drawing near; the dwarf would not have done so if he had come to sit with any other member of their company. Once, Legolas would have looked on his very movements as cumbersome, burdened as he was by his helm and his axes. He made himself look again and saw Gimli move with stealth, stirring no broken stone. _Perhaps he has his own grace_. “I wondered when you would speak,” the dwarf said once he had settled.

“You knew that I had noticed?”

The music of a dwarven chuckle seemed to fit the cavernous halls. “I may be a proud dwarf of the line of Durin, but I have not conceit enough to try to deceive immortal eyes. I did not hide from you.”

“No,” Legolas agreed. “It would not be your way. You are all openness with the hobbits, with all of our company.” _All but me_. “But still you do not say why you share my watches and not theirs.”

Dwarven hands shifted, searching something to work at. Legolas realized that he had rarely seen Gimli’s hands empty or idle. Settling on the bindings of a lesser axe, the dwarf opened his mouth to say, “The Shirefolk are a fellowship within our fellowship. Sam watches over his master and Master Brandybuck keeps an eye on his young cousin, anyway.”

“They share the dark out of friendship.”

“Aye.”

“And you would offer as much to me?”

The bindings of the axe were secure once more, wound one around the other. “Gandalf bade us be friends,” said the dwarf. “But this is not why.”

“I would hear the reason if you would give it.”

Gimli seemed to be looking far away, back into the dark. “I looked upon doors fashioned by an elf and a dwarf in friendship.”

“And felt wonder?” The elf did not truly need to ask; he had seen the change come over Gimli’s features.

“I wondered what we might do together if we opposed one another less.”

Legolas found himself shaking his fair head until pale strands of hair danced before his face. “And is this the way of dwarves? If I speak ‘friend,’ I may so easily enter into your heart?”

Gimli laughed again. “Is this the way of elves? To question a gift freely given? Do we know so little of each other?”

“It is the way of this elf. You make me feel wonder, master dwarf. I have been cruel to you.”

Gimli’s head moved side to side, negating the words. “No worse than I. We both spoke out of old mistrusts.”

Legolas could not accept this. His usually impassive face was stricken, his eyes bright in the dim. “My error was the greater one. I singled you out for my unkindness, an unkindness you did nothing to earn.”

The dwarf gave him a broad, mischief-bright grin. “I never did think the first born were actually perfect.”

Silver elven laughter brightened the dark. “No, we are not. And if you can suffer my imperfections, I would ask for your friendship now in the halls of your fathers and ask you to forget what has come before.”

“Then friends we are, Legolas Greenleaf.” Gimli stood and offered a deep, ceremonial dwarven bow.

Sitting, Legolas gaped. “That is all? I ask and you grant?” He seemed pleased and surprised and amazed all at once and Gimli considered teasing him by asking what penance he thought proper for slighting a dwarf lord.

Unsure of whether a new-forged friendship would stand up under such a joke, he settled for asking, “Do you always think and fret so much?”

“My father held captive yours!”

“Yes. And though your scowl can be as elegant as a dance, you are not Thranduil and I am not Gloin. And even he never thought to lay that debt entirely at the feet of the elvenking. Thornin Oakenshield’s stubbornness had a part to play.”

“Friends, then,” the elf murmured. “I shall share your watches, then, as you have shared mine. And, perhaps, as we journey on, you can tell me what you see and what the stones tell you.”

Gimli bowed again and then something flickered across his face. “Happy will I be for someone to speak to of Khazad-dûm, but there is something I would show you now.”

“We cannot stray far and leave the sleepers,” came the expected protest.

“Seven steps only will we go from their sides,” said the dwarf. “Only into the next chamber. If I am correct, you will see a sight that might serve to make our marches here worthwhile.”

“Lead on then, friend Gimli. I cannot see the way as clearly as you, so do not stray far from my side!”

Forcing back fears that Gimli was leading him to see some crumbling ruin, Legolas nearly staggered back when they crossed the threshold to the adjoining chamber. “I dream,” he said, the words more breath than sound. “There is Luinil! And Elemmírë! They have come down from the sky and dance upon the floor!” He whirled to the dwarf. “How does this come to pass? I have heard that dwarves could draw starlight into the jewels of a crown or the hilt of a sword, but this…”

Gimli smiled. “I will not have to ask if my gift is worthy, my new friend. I am glad.”

The elf moved through the starlight, speaking to each shining light as if to a friend. When he looked up, his eyes shined at Gimli. “What is this place? How did you know these stars would be here?”

“It is a dwarven art. Though we love our mountains, we thin the stone to feel the wind and to hear the rain and to see the stars. Clear gems in the floor match the constellations overhead and reflect their light.”

So began a watch of many minutes in the halls of Khazad-dûm, and, under the light of high and distant stars, Gimli son of Gloin and Legolas of the Woodland Realm began to see the truth of one another.

*******

 When their walk resumed, Legolas and Gimli journeyed side by side. The elf’s questions came bright and rapid and the dwarf’s booming answers followed. When their laughter rose together it reminded the other walkers of silver and gold wound together, each brightening the other.

Aragorn looked to their leader. “Well, that is a fine piece of work you have wrought.”

“It is a beginning.”

The Ranger tilted his head, questioning.

“But not all you wished.”

“The stars do not wheel according to my wishes, son of Arathorn. This thing, if it is what I believe, is something of great rarity and could heal much that is in need of mending, but it is beyond my powers.”

Aragorn flashed a knowing smile. “But not beyond your encouragement.” The wizard chuckled into his beard and made a sound of amused agreement.

To be continued!


	2. Part 2: Lorien

**An Ounce of Perception**

**(against an age of obscure)**

**Part 2: Lorien**

The Fellowship rested in the peace of Lorien and all around them elven voices rose into the twilight dim, mourning their lost leader. Having been welcomed by the Lord and Lady of the Golden Wood, the eight walkers sought their rest and gave vent to their grief. The hobbits sat together, weeping, and Boromir and Aragorn spoke of the road ahead, heads together beneath the golden boughs. Thranduil’s son was not surprised when Gimli came to his side. Though Moria would always be a place of fear for him, the friendship they had forged in the starry chamber remained. The dwarf held out his broad hands. “I’ve made you this.”

Legolas took hold of the small, warm bundle. “What is it, friend?”

“It’s a poultice, you daft creature.”

Legolas made his typical birdlike motion, cocking his head in question. Gimli caught the way his lips quirked at the teasing. “But I am uninjured.”

The dwarf shook his head and his beard seemed to bristle at the untruth. “There is a nasty, deep cut on your upper arm. I saw it when you drew me away from Balin’s tomb.” His voice grew husky with grief. Surprise touched elven eyes. Tears had bathed the dwarf’s cheeks and his eyes had been bright with anguish, his mouth wide as he wailed his loss. _And still you saw_.

“Elves heal quickly.”

“I do not doubt it, having seen the speed in your feet and how quickly you drew your arrows from your quiver. Still, even if the blade was not the poisoned type that orcs are wont to bear, orc blood is a foul thing. The poultice will draw out the filth.”

Accepting, Legolas pushed the sleeve of his tunic toward the shoulder and pressed the poultice to the jagged cut there. The warmth was pleasing and after a moment his eyes widened. “Gimli! This smells like cedre – what my folk call the emerald sentry.”

“Aye.” The dwarf lowered his eyes. “I thought it might bring you some small ease, to be reminded of your home and better times. I would lessen your grief if I could.” Then, he gave another of his deep bows and left Legolas wide-eyed with wonder.

A cluster of Galadrim elves stared at him, having watched the exchange. Legolas could see the marks of amusement in their faces and his fingers trembled for his bow. “It was a noble gift,” he told them, voice and eyes cold. The watchers melted into the trees. When he turned around to seek out his new friend, a grinning Ranger stood at his shoulder.

“I imagine your distant kin are thinking you as unfriendly and ill-mannered as any dwarf, now.”

“Let them think what they wish.” He adjusted the poultice, releasing more of its spicy scent. “Aragorn, do you know where Gimli would find cedre bark? Such trees do not grow here.”

“No, but they do grow at the foot of the Lonely Mountain. If I were to guess, your new friend’s pipe has sacrificed much for your comfort.”

"But how did he know it would be a comfort to me? How this one tree above the others?"

A smile danced along the mouth of the new leader of the fellowship. "The son of Gloin would have been raised on tales of the quest for Erebor. I expect the dwarves who traveled in them knew _exactly_ what elven wine barrels are made of, and elven benches, and elven weapons, too."

Legolas shook his head and smiled, remembering all of the foolish things he had so recently believed. “He will shift my entire view of the world before he is done. I was taught that dwarves are grasping things, greedy and blind to the needs of others. But what higher generosity could any being show than this? He seeks to free me from my grief, even as he retires to shoulder his own alone.” As the elf walked away, Aragorn felt certain that Gimli son of Gloin would not walk alone for long.

To be continued!


	3. Part 3: Lorien (continued)

**An Ounce of Perception**

**(against an age of obscure)**

**Part 3: Lorien (continued)**

The Lady of the Golden Wood had spoken in the ancient and secret tongue of the dwarves and as Legolas sat by a stream that laughed to itself, he wished that he possessed her knowledge. As the wish formed in his mind, he almost joined in with the stream. An elf wishing for the secrets of the dwarves! Perhaps some drop of Noldor blood was making itself known after all his long years! The thoughts of the elven prince scattered like leaves when the very elf he had been thinking of appeared at his shoulder as if his thoughts had called to her. Remembering the touch of her mind – _the test_ – Legolas decided that thought alone might serve as a form of summoning where such power was concerned. In the safety of the realm she ruled, she walked without guard or retainer and her eyes shined upon him, gentle as the touch of the sun.

“What are you puzzling over, son of the Greenwood? I would see care fall from your shoulders, here. The road ahead is long and dangerous. You would do well to take rest before you are called to set your feet on it yet again.”

“You honor me, Lady," the archer answered, "but you need not fear for me. I am not lost to grief, though the loss of Mithrandir is hard to bear, especially when I look to the days ahead.” He did not speak the name of the one who had kept him from losing himself in mourning, kept him from running from the Golden Wood back to those dark halls to rescue Gandalf if he lived or to lose his life in vengeance if he did not. Instead, he said, “I would not draw you away from your people and your deeds with my small cares.”

Lovely golden laughter spilled from Galadriel’s throat. “My time is yet mine to spend while Middle Earth remains free. And if your cares are small, my care for you is not, kinsman. You represent all elves on this quest.”

He nodded his gratitude and acquiescence. “I may represent all elvenkind, unready as I was for the task, but it is not to the elves that my mind now turns.” He paused to search her wise and radiant eyes. What he saw there comforted him and he gathered his courage to continue. “My thoughts dwell, now, with my friend Gimli. He cared for me when grief stole the song from my lips and I would offer him as much. Yet, to do so, I find that I need your wisdom, Lady, and your leave. I felt it a presumption to ask for either.”

She brushed a gentle hand over his furrowed brow. “Even if I cared not for you, Legolas Greenleaf,” _And that is not and **never** could be so_ , said her smiling eyes. “I would not wish to see the strong shoulders of Gloin’s son bowed under the burden of pain.”

Heart light with gratitude and with the presence of so great a leader of elves, Legolas confided his plan.

******

For the length of a day, Legolas worked alone in a glade at Lorien’s borders. Song had returned to his lips and to his heart, and his voice came to the border guards who wondered at its accent and at his errand, but who did not disturb him at his task. Rumor had flitted quickly through their ranks; they marked their cousin from Eryn Lasgalen as quick of hand and quick of temper. They had heard how he had defended the dwarf and they quietly searched him for some sign of taint. If Legolas felt the touch of their probing eyes he gave no sign, and when the sun began to slide down the sky he sought out the fellowship. His light-footed arrival was greeted by exclamations of welcome from the hobbits.

“We thought we’d lost you to fairer and loftier company,” said Pippin, drawing himself up as though delivering a great, grave announcement. Frodo and Samwise groaned at his silliness.

“He means only as you’ve been missed, Master Legolas,” said the gardener. “Though there are elves all about, they aren’t the sort of elves one can find much comfort in, if you'll pardon my saying so.”

The wood elf nodded his head low in thanks; comfort was what he had come to give. He hoped that Gimli could find it in him as easily as the Shire folk could. “I am proud to be the kind of elf best suited to a company like this,” he told them, smiling. “But it is Gimli’s company I seek now.” He turned bright eyes on the dwarf and all who saw them marked them as wise and magic-seeming and soft with affection. “Friend, will you walk a ways with me?”

As they matched their strides one to the other and took to the forest,  Legolas heard Sam say, “That’s a new tune and no mistake. And one a sight more pleasing to my ears, too!”

The answering laughter that softly rumbled through Gimli’s chest pleased the elf at his side, and Legolas let his hand rest a moment on his shoulder. When they had walked far enough that they began to lose the light, shoulders dappled by the shadows that had come to roost in the trees and turn all their gold into silver, Gimli admitted, “I thought as the hobbits did. That you sought peace from us with your kin.”

“It is a distant kinship. I was absent because I had a task to see to.” _But our friendship is new and so I will not censure you for your doubts._

“And now your task is finished, so you come to teach me of trees?” It was a jest, but a gentle one, and the dwarf’s open face told Legolas that he would listen and attend to his words if trees were what he wished to speak of. He smiled as a feeling of wonder swept over him again. It was the emotion that Gimli kindled in him most often; so often, in fact, that it was becoming familiar – almost a comfort! _But, then, I listened to him speak of earth and stone in the halls of his forefathers and was glad for his words. I am become a wonder to myself, too! Or, perhaps the two of us together make something wonderful and new._ He shied from the thought, knowing what would follow, and shook his head at Gimli. He had learned that there was no being that would wait as patiently for an answer as a dwarf.

“I would not presume to instruct one who brought me the bark of a tree of my homeland for comfort.”

“So, if we go not to sing to a glade under stars newly awakening, where are we going? Half-unsteady on your feet as you are, I start to wonder if you are the friend-elf who battled so staunchly at my side. So fierce a creature as that never needed to lean upon a dwarf!”

Legolas started at the jest but did not draw his hand away. “We are going to answer your gift, my friend. And I would think so sturdy a creature as my friend-dwarf would not mind being leaned on at need!”

It may have been that Gloin’s son heard something plaintive in his tone, for he softened and took on more of the trembling elf’s weight. “ ‘twas not an objection, elf. You are almost as light to bear as the shafts of light that find us here. And my gift needs no answer. That is the way of gifts.”

Doubt made his fast-beating heart stutter. “We can turn back.”

At his words, Gimli brought a hand to his forehead as if to still some sudden pain. “Friends, we call ourselves. It would be easier to be so if you would not doubt me at every turn. I said that my gift needs no answer, but I did not say that you had done wrong in wishing to offer one, or that I would turn aside from any gift you wished to grant me.” He paused to stare up at Legolas’s face, pale in the blue-edged twilight. “Is this the way of elves, to jump so at shadows?” The obvious fondness in his tone and eyes and rising up through bone and sinew to sing against the elf’s hand made Legolas draw a sharp breath.

“It is the way of this elf, tonight,” he managed. As the wood opened around them, he moved away from the dwarf’s side and stood before his offering. “I am no craftsman, so I fear the work may seem poor to your eyes.”

Gimli’s eyes were wide and storm-wracked. Legolas watched them take in each small, polished slab and heard him gently intone the names of the lost. “You have gotten the stones to shine for you,” he murmured.

“I pulled them from the bottom of the stream beds. They have been polished by fast-moving waters, and slow.”

“And the proper shape of the stone… you remembered it?”

“I drew you away in your moment of grief. The memory burns in me.”

Shaking fingers reached out and traced over the edges of the memorial markers, the only tombs that the colonists would ever have unless the darkness of Khazad-dum was healed. “You acted to save my life.” He turned dark, drowning eyes on the elf. “And now you restore the honor of my kin.” He blinked and sparkling tears fell down to adorn the marker that Legolas had appointed for Balin. It was larger than the others and a pale grey-white. “You remembered each one, to vary the stones so.”

He placed his hand, again, on the dwarf’s shoulder and felt it shaken by a sob. “I would return with you and see the proper rites observed if it were possible. And if such rites might be witnessed by elven eyes.”

A laugh and a sob mingled in the dwarf’s throat. “What secret could I keep back from you now? My dark name itself would not be too great a price to pay for this kindness.” And then his voice was lost to weeping and Legolas wound his long arms around him until his pain was spent.

When he could speak again, he asked the elf about the final marker. “For whom has this stone been raised? And how are the pale stones held in place atop the slab?”

“Since he bade us be friends, I included Mithrandir among these lost ones. Some of his greatest works were done for love of your folk, so I thought it might please him. Those pale river stones are called ‘luck stones’ among my people and it is sap that holds them in place.”

Gimli snorted softly at that. “An elvish solution, but a fine one. The Lady knows of this place?”

“I have her blessing,” Legolas assured him. “These markers will stand as long as Lorien lasts and the Lady herself and her handmaidens will see that the grasses do not cover them and that no hand is lifted to do them dishonor.” He reached out and brushed the tears from the dwarf’s lashes. “Will you rest, now? Letting go of grief can weary one as much as bearing it.” The dwarf nodded. “If my legs will bear me back to our companions, I will rest. But I will come here again to remember them.”

Legolas helped him to his feet. “I am glad. When your pain is less, maybe you will tell me of them.”

It would be an honor.”

To be continued!


	4. Part 4: Lorien (still)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize the depth of silliness in the "melon" remark, but that's what they wanted to say. I just transcribe! ;)

**An Ounce of Perception**

**(against an age of obscure)**

**Part 4: Lorien (continued)**

The act of weeping had left the dwarf’s voice hoarse and Legolas had to listen closely in order to hear through the gruffness. Once, he would not have known how to listen, would not have realized that Gimli drew his sternness around him like a cloak in order to hide his vulnerable and broken parts. “Where are you leading me now, elf? My legs will be too worn for climbing ere long and neither our Ranger nor our man from Gondor will be pleased at being awakened to haul a dwarf into the branches.”

Legolas chuckled at the image but answered question for question. “Am I never to hear my name from your tongue, friend? There are many elves in Lorien. One of them may take to answering you if you will not name me.”

Once, the dwarf would have said that elves were too high above ordinary folk to deign to speak with him, but now he only halted to look a moment on the elf at his side. “Legolas, then.” But the thought came to him that few were the dwarves who have been invited to take an elf’s given name into their mouths. _Then I join Narvi with pleasure, for to speak his name is to bring to mind the sight of starlight on swift water and the glint of jewels in hidden places. And the sound of it is like to the ringing voice that lives at the heart of a clear jewel, waiting to be found by the children of Mahal._ “Where then do you lead me, Legolas-friend?”

“I am done leading you at all. And you will be pleased to know that you will be spared climbing this night.” They stood before a small shelter built of pale stone, hidden away in the trees.

“What is this place? How did you bring us here?”

Legolas fidgeted a bit at the question; or, rather, he performed a series of graceful, uncertain motions that Gimli had come to interpret as the equivalent of elvish fidgeting. “It is a gift from my woodland cousins. They heard that I came from Eryn Lasgalen and thought that this guardhouse might prove more comfortable than the treetops. They have heard that much of my father’s realm is underground rather than in the air.”

To the elf’s surprise, Gimli’s laughter came rolling and bumping through his body like a shipment of barrels sent down to Long Lake. “They know less of your homeland than _I_ do! And all I have to go on are my father’s stories!” They passed together into the guardhouse and a still-chuckling Gimli quickly lit the candles stationed above the hearth and on the window ledges. As the warm, little lights blossomed, he saw that the tips of the elf’s ears had gone red. Amused at this mortal-seeming development, Gimli gripped his arm to offer reassurance. “You needn’t panic. It wasn’t you that tossed Thorin Oakenshield’s company into the cellars. And who’s to say that if elves had been crossing dwarf lands on some grand quest that Thorin wouldn’t have done the same if his questions were not answered to his satisfaction? The past need not always rear up between us and cause us pain.” The dwarf felt the planes of muscle beneath his hand relax as Legolas accepted his words.

Looking around, he saw a cupboard and sideboard for supplies, a hearth and a pile of cut logs, hooks on which to rest weapons or tools, and a hollowed floor space filled with covers. “It is a fair enough place,” he decided aloud. “Waystation though it is. It is the first elvish place I’ve seen to value comfort and use over ornament.”

Legolas surprised him with a smile. “I wish, then, that you could see my chambers in the Greenwood. We are more alike than we supposed. While my father and my brothers love to announce their station through fine clothes and jewels, it is my way to keep only useful things about me.”

Enjoying a glimpse into the prince’s life, Gimli returned his smile and drew a flint from a pouch on his belt. “Well, then, this dwarf shall aim to always be of use to you!” Kneeling, he saw to the fire as Legolas hung their cloaks and rummaged in the store cupboard for wine. Amusement tugged at his mouth as he considered the type of gathering the guardhouse usually hosted and how different he and Gimli were from what it had known. His imagination filled the small dwelling with Galadhrim protectors ending their watch with wine and song. _And, yet, I find in myself no wish to join them and no eagerness to tell them of my truest self, when to Gimli I would speak of all things!_

The flame that came to be kindled by dwarven hands was perfect for the late hour – large enough to give warmth and a rosy orange light, but too small for cooking or craftwork. As its comfortable murmuring began to fill in the corners of the guardhouse, dwarf and elf retired to the sleeping nest. It was partitioned into distinct sleeping shelves, and if Legolas felt a twinge of regret that they were to be so separated he refused to acknowledge it even in his most private thoughts. “Your eyes trace the boundaries of the room. Are you uncomfortable mellon-nin?”

Performing a most hobbit-ish widening of the eyes, Gimli turned on his side to regard the elf. “I have heard you compare me to ground-shrooms and held my tongue. Are you now to read the roundness of my form and call me a melon!?”

Surprised at the dark richness of dwarven lashes when touched by firelight, Legolas took a moment to hear. Then, hearing Gimli dredge up the old insult from Rivendell, the elf passed through embarrassment and shock before he realized the joke and slugged the dwarf with a pillow. Unprepared for such an un-elvish revenge, Gimli caught the moss-and-feather-filled bundle in the face with an “oof” that quickly turned to pleased laughter as Legolas tussled with him.

“You know elvish enough to know that that was no insult, you bearded and bothersome creature!”

Gimli struggled beneath pale white limbs that darted in every direction and which seemed to be everywhere at once. “It is no wonder that you are so fierce against the spiders that trouble your woods, elf. You seem to have almost as many legs as they do! Between you and these coverlets, I’ll never be untangled!”

Legolas grinned his triumph and tightened long fingers on the dwarf’s wrists. “Perhaps such a fate will teach you to be more careful of your words!” His expression changed then, became rueful. “Though perhaps I have as much to learn. I didn’t know that you’d heard that ground-shroom remark.” The elf’s long neck bowed as his voice softened and Gimli found himself ringed by the gold-fall of his hair. “I hope you know, now, that I realize the depth of my error.” He could be grateful, at least, that he had learned it in Moria, that it had not taken Galadriel’s obvious affection for Gimli for his eyes to be opened to all that the dwarf was.

Freeing one hand, Gimli dared to touch the shining strands. “You’ve lost yourself in the past again. Come back to the present where you no longer see a ground-shroom when you look upon me and I no longer feel cowed and belittled by the beauty you bear.”

Shock bloomed like pale stars in the blue domes of the elf’s eyes. “You felt that?”

“Aye.” Gimli might have said more. He could have told the elf that it was the way of most mortal beings when looking on elves – to first see wonder and beauty and grace and then to regret their own form and clumsiness. Instead, he just looked up into the loveliness of the down-looking elven face that had become even more beautiful in familiarity and friendship.

Long fingers sought those callused by weapons-work and by craft and held tight. “But you understand that it was wrong to think so? To doubt yourself? You are not without beauty, son of Gloin.”

Feeling dazed by proximity (he could have leaned up and been nose to nose with the elven prince!) and by touch and by the feel of blood pounding through their twined fingers, Gimli could do naught but accept. _I have beauty enough now_ , thought the dazed dwarf, _with you all around me_! In that moment tGimli remembered his father telling him of the journey through Mirkwood. There, Bilbo Baggins had looked on the fierce loveliness of the wilderness for the first time and confided himself forever changed. _This moment feels as though it could remake me for all times, but I have no wish to fight it._ He swallowed, stabbed by fear. _But will jewels shine the same now that I have seen the shine of firelight there in the hollow of his throat?_

As he lay silent, Legolas shifted to give him his freedom. At last, he answered the elf’s words, “Thank you, Legolas.” But he was thinking of all that the elf had given him and wishing that he could offer something in return beyond thanks. He wished that he knew what might be offered to this new-made friend who could be deadly and fierce in one moment and full of joy and song the next.

As the silence lengthened, Legolas found his way back to the beginning of the conversation. “What were you looking at?”

“Before you battered me with the bedding?”

“Before you deserved battering.”

“I was thinking of the ways I would shape a dwelling like this. It is a game dwarves play. When our hands must be idle, we toil in our minds to imagine new forms or to add new comforts to a given space. In mines, especially, it is a popular pastime.”

Legolas propped himself up on one elbow; it was the most informal pose that Gimli had ever seen him take, with his hair mussed from play and his eyes wide with curiosity. “You have worked in mines?”

“In mines and at forges, as a crude smith and as a skilled one, and as a merchant selling the wares of Erebor. The last afforded me the most joy, for it allowed me to see more of the world than the mountain and to meet more folk than I could meet in Dale. It taught me, too, of hardship and allowed me to learn the use of my axes against robbers and against orcs.”

“But you have not yet chosen a calling of your own – a single craft to which to devote your skills.” When Gimli looked confused, wondering where he had come upon such knowledge, the elf admitted, “I overheard you speaking of it to the hobbits. They see you a wise elder, young as you are, and listen eagerly to your stories.”

“I have nieces and nephews in the Mountain and grew up with cousins as well as a younger sister. The hobbits remind me of them and I am happy to tell them stories if it cheers them in dark places. They would be glad to hear your tales as well.” He paused, pretended to be considering. “Provided have not forgotten the way of them, ancient as you are.”

“I have more than one pillow, dwarf.”

“Ah, but this time I am prepared for the nature of your attacks.” His eyes shined and Legolas was forced to fight off a laugh as he imagined him crying, “Khazad ai-menu!” as he pelted him with the bedding.

“Doubtless, I would not survive against a dwarf that is forewarned. Let us have peace, and you can tell me what changes you would make to this place.”

“You must give me my challenge, elf. I must know who I am to please in my design, who is to dwell here when it has been changed. Will this be a house of men? Of hobbits? Of elves?”

The elf mused a moment, considering. “Make it the dwelling of an elf and dwarf together.” The words had sounded in his heart and his mind and at first he was not certain that they had made it to his lips.

But Gimli smiled, pleased. “You are good at this game for a beginner, elf! You give me a true challenge! Such a dwelling has probably not been made in all the ages of the world.”

Energized by the task he had been set, Gimli sat up, surveying the boundaries of the ceiling and seeming to measure by eye alone the expanse of the floor and the cut of the windows. “And this construction offers challenges enough.”

Though far from recovered at what he had unexpectedly dared, Legolas shot his friend a questioning look. “Does the master craftsman offer excuses before he has even begun?”

“Not excuses – only an observation. Your kin did not intend this place as a long-term dwelling. To make it so, it should be enlarged. But, if we are to please the elf who will dwell here, I think we must first look up.”

“Is that not always the direction you look upon encountering elves?”

Catching the too-innocent tone before he fully heard the words, Gimli gave a fierce growl. “I, too, have pillows, elf. And axes.”

“And I wish to brave neither. Why must we look up?”

“This ceiling is crudely made. The stone is soft. If rafters were anchored in it forth and back,” he pointed to show where these anchoring would be, “Then they would be as branches. Vines could even be grown across them, guided from these low windows to the high windows that should be cut above.”

Legolas looked up and imagined smooth, golden boughs reaching through the shadows. “And the dwarf who dwells here – he will not mind these leave and vines?”

“Dwarves, too, like growing things. Of course, the table should be moved there,” he indicated a corner. “Otherwise flowers will be falling down into the cups. A dwarf would not like to find flowers floating in his ale or his tea.”

Laughter caught the elf unawares, coming fast to his lips, and his heart was charmed at the thought of Gimli coming up from a deep drink with pink and orange and pollen-gold flowers clinging to his beard. “In fact, if it were the elf’s wish, a dwarf could dig beneath this floor and a guide a spring _through_ such a house as this. It might bring a confused newt or frog hopping through, but it would also nourish the greenery. Of course, if a spring were dug, it should be anchored.” He climbed out of the nest to mark out a space on the floor with his steps. “Here. A tree could be planted here, provided the elf could be talked into a small sort of tree. And here, before it, a small stone bridge to cross our spring so that we did not need to suffer damp feet when replenishing the fire on a snowy night.”

Legolas felt his body go stiff at the word “our,” but Gimli was too caught up in his designing to notice.

Forcing his voice back under control, he said, “You speak of elvish things, mellon-nin, but what comforts would a dwarf have in such a house?”

“I was coming to that. Dwarfs are not such complicated creatures,”

“Do not say as ‘simple as ground-shrooms,’ dwarf, I warn you.”

Gimli smirked. “It never entered my mind. As I was saying, a dwarf could live here with few changes. Instead of wooden cupboards, a dwarf would have safe places hewn into the cool stone. Places to cool ale or keep cheese. Depending on his craft, he would desire a forge, but that could be built into a workshop outside. Beyond that, a dwarf would wish only a heavy rug before the fire and comfortable blankets upon the bed, good food to eat, and some occupation to work at.”

“And a companion to praise his good works?”

“Aye, and that.”

For the moment, it was all that Legolas could hope for and he drowsed into the open-eyed form of elvish slumber still listening to Gimli making minor improvements. When he dreamed, it was of mugs with handles wrought and shaped to fantastical forms by dwarven hands and of blossoms floating in their contents.

To be continued!


	5. Part 5: The Great River

**An Ounce of Perception**

**(against an age of obscure)**

**Part 5: The Great River**

As it sped away from Lorien, the river showed its grief in the ways that it thrashed between the banks and rolled like the eyes of a frantic horse. Pale foam made patterns of lace around the prows of the grey boats, and Legolas withdrew into himself to explore the bright, high pain that had come to live in the center of his heart as light comes to dwell at the center of a diamond. He had felt it first in Moria when he had seen Gimli defending Balin’s tomb. A shaft of light had wended down from some high place, becoming more blue than white as it entered the mines. He had seen that light touch the dwarf and something in him had kindled in answer; his heart had seemed to pulse in pain, or great need. Although he had guessed at the nature of the pain that had intruded upon his heart, Legolas had conquered it in battle and lost it entirely as they flew from the mines.

_I was my own again until Lorien, when he looked on me with a friend’s eyes and when I began to know him for noble and for fair_.

Part of the elf still struggled with doubt. His people did not speak of the wonder and pain of deep love, though many sought it. He knew that his parents had shared a true bond, but he knew nothing of what they had felt or if they had ever striven against that which drew them one to the other. _Is this what you felt, ada_? he wondered. _Did it crowd your heart so and fill the center of your bones? Did it make a cage of your ribs and deny you a longed-for breath of air tinged with green smell?_ A strange smile moved over his lips. _Certainly, it did not make your fingers ache to stroke the fiery tresses adorning a mortal, dwarven head_! Legolas had heard love called madness by many and knew his father would have called him mad for the truth that had begun to fill his heart. _But he would speak without having seen my chosen one’s hands as they reached out to take those three golden strands from Lady Galadriel_ , thought the archer. _He would speak without having seen the reverence in his features, and he would never have wiped away the tears that Gimli, elf-friend, wept at parting from the Golden Wood_. He remembered the touch of Aragorn’s dark eyes when he had touched the dwarf’s cheeks. He had seen shock there and many questions, but the river had hurried them on and Legolas was left to struggle alone with that which the man who wore the Evenstar about his neck had long ago resolved.

From the silvery necklace, the elf’s thoughts leapt to the token Gimli now carried, the three golden hairs that he had wrapped first in leaves and then in a leather pouch that had been emptied in order to receive its sacred burden. “Nothing else will share this space with the Lady’s gift,” Gimli had said as he packed. “And safe will I keep it until it can be set in crystal and looked upon in wonder by all who see it.”

Lost in thought, Legolas found his fingers moving to his own pale braids. _I would offer up strand upon strand for you to practice with until you found the crystal that best suited your task, friend_ , he thought, but the words did not make it to his tongue. The elf only left his thoughts when he felt something drape itself over his shoulders and turned to see Gimli arranging his cloak about him. Returning to his seat after the precarious balancing that such an act had required, he took up his oars again and pitched his voice low, not wanting to be heard by their companions. “You were trembling, friend, as a beast trembles on sensing a storm. You do not fear the water as Sam and I do, not in a boat fashioned by your kin, so I thought you might be taking a chill from the water.”

Legolas gave him a lopsided smile. “You saw me walk atop the snow in the mountains without taking such a chill.”

Gimli made an amused sound that was all consonants. “Searching for the sun, as only a creature as silly as an elf would do. Aye, I remember.” He weathered the way the elf’s eyes narrowed in a glare before going on. “That is why I worried. Have you taken some sickness? If you have, it is one that I have never seen.”

Legolas shifted, drawing the borrowed cloak tighter around his shoulders and breathing in the tilled-earth-and-vanilla scent of the dwarf’s pipe. Other smells lived in the cloth: the oil Gimli used in the care of his axes, the tang of wood smoke, and something that reminded the elf’s keen senses of sugar touched by flame. It was mortal, un-elven, and exotic – and it comforted him beyond all measure. “I am well, friend dwarf,” he said at last. “See? My trembling leaves me.” Gimli seemed to accept the answer for the moment and turned again to boat, watching it as if it bore him some ill intent. Unwilling to speak of the changes coming over him, Legolas knew that he would have to have more care in the days ahead. If Gimli came to believe that something was amiss, he would be as implacable as the mountains he loved in his search for the truth. One side of his mouth lifted.

_An illness, friend? No. If I suffer, then I suffer for want of your touch. And if I find strength to speak to you of what has been wrought between us, then it will not be here, where I must struggle to be heard above the water. I will be content with your presence and your friendship and your good, strong hands on the oars. For now._

To be continued!


	6. Chapter Six: The Great River continued

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The dull grey hours passed without event.” – J.R.R. Tolkien 
> 
> “We’ll see about that.” – me (Undeservingly gifted with a canvas by Tolkien)

**An Ounce of Perception**

**(against an age of obscure)**

**Part Six: The Great River (continued)**

Though the country that bordered the river lacked beauty, the Fellowship came to learn that it did enjoy the same rich blue twilight that shaded the dwellings of Bag End, the same blue that made the Tower of Ecthelion seem washed by waves until the moon set it blazing white again, the same blue that doused the green light at the heart of the leafy groves of Eryn Lasgalen – and it comforted them. Drawing their boats to the shore, they made camp as the fading light silvered the thin, shivering trees. Beyond the shore, the mighty river grew as dark as the ink in Bilbo Baggins’s best well. Or so said Sam Gamgee, watching to see if the newly awakened stars would grow strong enough to mark the dark water.

While the hobbits saw to provisions and Aragorn strode the perimeter, establishing its safety, Legolas and Gimli left their craft for a small stand of trees. There, the dwarf watched the low light rob the gold from the archer’s hair as he bent to the task of gathering dry twigs and wind-broken branches. In the past days, his elven friend had made him uneasy, seeming more like the elves of Lorien than like the fierce fighter Gimli knew him to be. The dwarf feared that something had unanchored his companion, tearing his roots from Middle Earth and drawing him toward some other shore known only to the far-seeing eyes of the Eldar. Strange murmurings had fallen from elf’s lips as they had drifted south, poetic snatches of nonsense about “the favored light of the stars” and much about “mortal gifts” and “heart’s pain.” When asked, Legolas would force one of his new wan and glimmering smiles and say that it was only a bit of a song or some remembrance. The ever-unsteady motions of the boat had prevented Gimli from pressing for more. Now, as pale, soft boots crafted for the favored feet of a Mirkwood prince made no sound in the deadfall, the dwarf shivered at his soundlessness; the desolate landscape made the elf seem half a phantom.

Sensing the distress in his dwarven helpmate, Legolas turned to him with a true smile, breaking the momentary spell of Gimli’s fear. “I can feel your eyes pressing between the blades of my shoulders like the point of one of my arrows, mellon-nin. Have you found your craft at last and plan to sculpt my likeness when you return to your mountains?”

Once Gimli might have heard or imagined haughtiness in that voice and bristled in offense. Now, the voice of the elf had a markedly different effect; dipping his head, the dwarf smiled into his beard. It seemed that Legolas was beginning to return to himself after his odd behavior on the water. In honor of his father’s adventure stories, the dwarf had privately come to mark Legolas’s sudden, playful moods as “tra-la-lally” silliness; such things were to be expected if one kept company with elves. “I will leave the choosing of a craft to another day.” A day after this quest, his tone suggested. “But it would not be unheard of. It has ever been the way of dwarves, to make likenesses of those they care for, in metal or in stone.”

A moment passed as they continued the work of searching for firewood and Gimli cast a glance over his shoulder. Had those ever-changeable features altered at his words? Did his new-won companion have any means by which to fathom the truth buried at the heart of what he had spoken, as sharp and fragile as a forest of crystals hidden in the heart of a rock? The shadows hid anything he might have taken for a sign; he saw only the gleam of elven eyes in the deepening dark.

“And I watched because you seemed to be distant,” he explained. “I started to half-believe in those myths about wanderers turned into ghost-lights. Thin and fine as you are, I would grieve to see you made into a shaft of light to be drawn away between these sad trees.”

The archer froze at his task and cocked his head as if to see better. “You would rescue me from sad trees, my d-friend dwarf?” He had wanted to say “dear” and his tongue stumbled against the undared word, but Gimli had no way of knowing what he had not chanced to speak.

“If the means were given to me. A land bereft of good stone wears on the heart of a dwarf, so I imagined these meager groves would do the same to a woodland elf.”

Throat full with something to which he could not yet give voice, Legolas found no fitting answer. Instead, he fitted his hand to his friend’s shoulder and turned him back toward the camp. “Come, Gimli. We’ll lose the light if we don’t turn back soon.” Warmth seemed to spread from those five points of contact where slender fingers met firm flesh garbed in sturdy cloth and metal rings forged beneath the Lonely Mountain. To Gimli’s mind no fire could do more than that warmth as it wended through him, startling but not unwelcome.

_But that is no answer that I can make to one such as you_ , thought the dwarf. _It is a fool’s dream, only_. He remembered the test of the Lady Galadriel, the blazing visions she had kindled in his mind, and shame momentarily brightened his cheeks. Keeping his silence on the subject, Gimli forced himself to murmur an assent and followed the elf back to camp.

To the sturdy warrior’s surprise, Legolas knelt with him as he began the work of building a lively blaze; the elf’s eyes took in even the most subtle of motions, from the positioning of his fingers as he struck the flint to the intricate work of layering heavy branches amongst the twigs. “Can all dwarves summon fire so quickly at need? I remember Mithrandir asking for your help in the mountain passes.”

“It needs a quick, deft hand to wake a forge gone cold,” the dwarf explained. “So we learn the craft early and well. It is one of our first tests, you know, as we move toward mastery of a craft.” He stopped, surprised by his own words. His kin would have censured him for the sharing, but it was not on account of those beloved faces that he fell silent. “You would not know,” he realized aloud. “For all the beginnings we made in Lorien, I know little of the ways of elves,”

“And I know less of the ways of dwarves,” Legolas finished for him with a smile.

“Ah. Now I understand why you will suffer yourself to kneel in ashes. Elves are most curious creatures. I have learned that.”

Blue eyes twinkled with mirth. “Your ‘curious’ has more than one meaning, I think,” Legolas returned and his smile had nothing unworldly or drawn about it. “And why should I worry about dirt or ashes more so than my friend dwarf?” No sign of offense colored the words, only more elvish curiosity.

“I suppose that I imagined that a prince of elves would not light his own fires,” Gimli said, placing the finishing touches on the foundation of the flames before drawing back.

“Not always,” conceded the elf. “And you could not quite imagine me at a forge, soot on my face, hammer in hand?”

The image won a laugh. “No, I cannot, though I know, now, that there is no hammer mighty enough to break you in half as you hefted it, for all your fine appearance.”

And so they spoke together of the craft of lighting fires, and Legolas answered all that he learned of dwarves with equal lore of elves. Commenting on how much he had learned in the time it took for the fire to be built and then burn down enough for cooking, the elf teased the dwarf about becoming a diplomat to Eryn Lasgalen after their quest.

Standing a little apart, Boromir looked to Aragorn with wondering eyes. “I have heard that dwarves are secretive folk,” said the man of Gondor to the Ranger. “But watching them, I would not believe it.”

“Mock them not,” Aragorn cautioned. “It may seem a strange friendship to our eyes, but it may well be one needed in these days of coming darkness.”

“When hope is carried by Halflings all known things may be changed and made unknown,” Boromir agreed. “But I would dare speak no word against them, strange as their bond may look to my eyes.” He smiled. “A dwarven axe would too soon find my ribs, I fear.”

They chuckled together at that, but Aragorn added, “Dwarves are perilous fierce in their friendships and unwavering in their loyalty. Legolas may not know it, but with a dwarven defender at his side, he may have less to fear than the rest of our company on this quest."

******

 

Night fell and Boromir began to walk the boundaries, watching over the sleepers. Legolas and Gimli had taken to positioning themselves between the hobbits and the wider world beyond, so that if danger found them it would also find axes and arrows ready to meet it. Often, they spoke together as the rest of the Fellowship sank down into dreaming. This night, Gimli lay quiet as he watched Legolas enter that strange half-dream of elven sleeping, and spoke only when he knew he would not be heard. “You spoke of sculpting, heart’s friend,” he said quietly, feeling himself a lad again confiding his secrets to the silent stones. “And so have turned my mind to thoughts of that task, untrained as my hands are for it.”

He held them up as if for inspection. He excelled at combat and was famed both within and beyond Erebor for his skill with throwing axes as well as with the hardier, heavier battle axe. His hands also knew the work of mining and of bringing a smith’s hammer down on metal heated by the forge. But to shape the likeness of an elf? It was a challenge inside of challenge enclosed by a harder challenge yet, reminding him of the nested boxes his father liked to enclose gifts in, his smile growing each time a new box was uncovered in place of the long-sought prize.

Gimli had not courage enough – not yet – to explain the difficulties to the elf awake, but his heart and mind were so full of them that he had to speak aloud, even if he had only the night and the river to listen and the warm rustling of the fire to answer. “Ages I might seek,” he said at last, “And find no marble to match the skin of brow and throat. And what hands hold skill enough to polish stone until it seems to breathe and flash with life? My ancestors may have known that secret once, but it has not been given unto me.”

The dwarf broke off then, thinking of the many enchanted artifacts inside the his mountain home. No craftsman or gifted dwarrowdam now knew how to make such treasures. “Yet dwarves are patient folk,” he murmured to himself. “And we will seek until our lost arts belong again to all, Mahal-willing. But even if all those gifts were mine and I could be sure of the marble I had shaped, much work would lay before me. When men and elves think of dwarrows, it is gold that comes into their minds and gold would be my next challenge. Can you guess why, dear greenwood elf?” He smiled at the open-eyed sleeper. The sight of those eyes, unfixed and lost even in their openness, remained disconcerting, but his affection for the elf had led him to acceptance of it at last. It was still sometimes preferable to all that singing.

“Since you have no guesses for me, I will supply the answer to my own riddle, elf. Gold for the hair of my sculpture – that is what is needed. But gold beaten as thin and fine as wire, gold filled with honeyed light taken from a flower’s heart, gold turned pale as wheat under first frost – such as this would I need to craft.” His eyes brightened as if from the vision of such were reflected there undimmed. “If such alchemy were mine to work, I would name it for you, you know,” he confided. Fondness gentled his voice, making it as warm and soft as the precious metal of which he spoke. “ ‘Elf gold’ it would be called. And my kin would grumble as they forged until the beauty of the color filled their eyes and they forgot old feuds for the love of the wonders they wrought.”

He stared long at the elf then, to make certain his words were his alone. “And still, the hardest task would be left undone. It has come down into the speech of men to speak of eyes as gems, but they have forgotten that they learned such speech from our mountain lords in days of old. My forefathers knew each piece of gold and chip of crystal in their treasuries, for on such wealth was our safety founded and from such stores came our ability to buy supplies, to feed and clothe our people. They knew gems, too, those lords. When they gave so mighty a compliment as to say ‘your eyes sparkle like gems,’ ‘twas specific gems they held in the eyes of their minds, gems they had polished and shaped until light fell in love with them and came to dwell in them as in a house, making each facet into a window looking in on its shining.” He broke off to stroke his beard, thinking of treasures he had been gifted and treasures he had held. “I have never seen a single gem rich enough to stand for your eyes, friend elf, not even in sculpture.”

“But I do not despair!” he reassured the sleeping archer after a moment. “Your words have set me thinking and I may have found an answer that would serve, if I was to have only your likeness to remind me of our friendship and the great gift you gave me in the care of my fallen kin.” A smile creased the skin about his eyes. “How my father would shake when he saw the bust of Thranduil’s son in my dwelling! I will not lie to you even in sleep, friend – I think it would be anger that would set him shaking first. But my tales of you would melt his fury as music will do, and he would hear of the stones you raised. They would all hear, and so would come to do honor to the image of you, if I had skill enough to see it made.” He subsided into gentle chuckles, thinking on the family he missed and the way they would respond to the changes their quest had already wrought in him.

“Where was I? Yes, eyes. Eyes like gems, but no gems like enough to eyes like yours. But I have an answer to it, as I said. Not a single gem, no, but fine, thin, shimmering layers of gems, one atop the other – that would serve. Each would send its light and colors through the others until they made a new color that changed with each shift of the light. My gem would have in it the blue of growing things – of hurtsickle flowers and the blue of the shadows of your forest. That I think would please you.”

The dwarf’s eyes closed then and he seemed to drift, imagining the shine of blue flowers in mountain meadows as the wind swept through them and carried their colors off into the sky. When he continued his voice was sleep-touched and content. “Ah, how the gem-cutters would smile when they learned what pieces I needed. I have not told you of the gemlings yet. As much as they love their craft, so do they love striking bargains for their work. Each piece is as a child to them and they never easily surrender their darlings. Moonstone, I will have of them first. You would like such a stone – like the light of the moon turned solid in your hands. It has a sheen like the pale wood of your bow. It would be the foundation for your eyes.”

He lifted a brow in question and studied elven features touched by the wavering light of the moon. “Have you patience for the rest, master elf? I have warned you how a dwarf will go on when it comes to beautiful things.” Whether he was referring to the jewels and metals of his craft or to the elf even Gimli could not have said.

Receiving no sign that he should leave off, he told the rest. “Aquamarine would follow, the moonstone shining behind, and then lapis to deepen the blue. Over the lapis I would layer blue opal with its laughing rainbows enclosed. Few of my folk prize opal, soft as it is, but it seems a proper elf stone to my mind. It is changeable and holds laughter, draws in the warmth of the breast it adorns. A layer of blue goldstone will cover the opal, protecting it from cold, and its flecks of silver will shine like stars drowned in color. I have seen you speak to them in Khazad-dum so I would give them a home in your eyes for always.”

He closed his eyes then, content with the vision he had created. Still, he had final words for a friend wandering in dreams. “Goodnight then, Legolas. If I live to see the mountains of my homeland again I will create it if I can. And when I set it before you – what then would you see? What then would you know of a dwarf’s fool heart?” Despite the epithet, a smile lay upon the dwarf’s lips as he slept and his fingers danced in dreams of shaping.

 

To be continued!


	7. Chapter 7: The Great River (still yet)

**An Ounce of Perception**

**(against an age of obscure)**

**Part Seven: The Great River (still yet)**

 

 

Dwarven eyes were not keen.

An accepted truth, that maxim had had no particular bearing on the long life of Legolas Greenleaf. It had merely existed in his expansive, ruminative mind alongside other such established tenets as “short are the lives of men” and “meddle not lightly in the affairs of wizards.” But this dwarf… this dwarf he dared not consider as _his_ dwarf, much as his heart might urge – Gimli Gloin’s son would see all that he had taken for truth overthrown. For Gimli alone among their company had marked the slight change that had come over him when Aragorn had asked him to take the first watch with him (they now stood two at a watch, for the Ranger feared that orcs roamed the far bank of the river).

“Have you had some falling out with our leader?” asked the dwarf as he cajoled an axe edge back to its original sharpness.

Legolas turned his eyes from the deft movements of his hands.

When he made no answer, Gimli went on, patient and enduring as the earth. “For I know that you do not fear to walk in darkness or to face either the hateful eyes or sharp weapons of any orc.”

He continued to face the river, afraid of what might show in his eyes when next he spoke. “You see fear in me, mellon-nin?”

His ears told him that the axe had reached a satisfying sharpness and was returned to its casings. “Uneasiness, I would better name it. A tightening of breath and at bone, the source of which I cannot trace, for all my seeking.”

Wild laughter sang within him, but the elf caged it inside. _No, you would not be able to find the source, friend, for even your keen eyes cannot see **themselves**_ **!**

“It is the same restlessness that came upon you on the water,” the dwarf continued. “But I am no closer to guessing its cause here on land.”

Now he could turn. Now he could offer a friend’s smile to this dearest of dwarves. “Persistent are Durin’s folk.”

Gimli shook a partially whittled stick at him, his newest diversion. “Best you not forget it, elf. I will have this riddle that you’ve become answered, though I be forced to work at it until the reforging of the world.”

Though the dwarf spoke gently, Legolas knew that he was telling the truth and that his determination sprang from care. It moved him and he might have spoken, but then the hobbits tumbled into their conversation, moving as only hobbits could – appearing as a troop instead of as individuals.

“Riddles!” exclaimed Sam Gamgee with delight. “Are you playing at riddles? I’ll bet dwarves have riddles that no one has heard outside of their mountains. And there must be rare, fine elvish ones, too! Mr. Bilbo had a dear store of them that he would set me to thinking upon as I tended his roses. Quality riddles, those known to Mr. Bilbo. Have you heard the one about the red horses?”

And so it was that elf and dwarf alike were set to searching their memories for riddling things, for neither one could bear to diminish the obvious pleasure of the gardener, knowing that there might be few such days of joy and play ahead of them. Legolas was still trying his best to translate a particularly tricky piece about mushrooms (Gimli kept interrupting to say that the answer must surely be “dwarves,” for did not elves imagine that dwarves and fungi alike spent their days in darkness, near to the ground?) when Aragorn called him to the watch. Gimli’s eyes were still laughing when he left him to entertain the hobbits and if Legolas felt a gentle pang at leaving the reach of such shining, it did not slow his stride.

The elf and the leader of men had made an entire circuit of the camp and had returned to the curve of the river where the water ran fast when Aragorn broke his silence. “You will have to speak of it, you know.”

The elf’s smile cut, biting into his cheeks. “You would use the river as your shield, then?”

“As yours,” said the Ranger. “I have no secrets that need be hidden from the ears of dwarves.” He passed a hand over his mouth to hide his smile when the elf bristled. The son of Thranduil was a volatile creature; to press him on a particular point was nearly to call a long, white knife into his hand. Without realizing it, the elf had just told him how very dear Gimli had become. “As your friend, it is my place to tell you that you are running out of hiding places.”

“The hobbits have already coaxed all my riddles from me,” said the elf, his high emotion draining away as he remembered Aragorn for the truest of friends. “And now you would beset me with riddles anew! I plead a reprieve. My tired mind would be better left to thoughts of keeping safe those who now sit at the fireside.”

“Plainer then shall I couch my words,” said Aragorn. “And words not my own. Do you recall when last we rested at the river’s bend?”

“I sat long,” the elf remembered. Testing and repairing my fletchings. The truest arrow will dance and drift if the fletching comes loose or is poorly spaced.”

“And as you worked and Boromir schooled the hobbits in the combat of a soldier of Gondor, Gimli and I walked and spoke of elves. Would you hear what knowledge he sought of me?”

The elf’s eyes grew grey. “I would hear no word that he wished withheld.”

Aragorn lifted a hand in a gesture of peace. “Gimli gave me no charge to keep secret his thoughts from you.” His teeth flashed as he smiled in the fading light. “Perhaps, like me, he has nothing to hide.”

To Legolas, this seemed a grim thought indeed – that no secret glowed warmly inside a dwarven heart. _But perhaps a dwarf would not keep such love secret. Perhaps where I cower, he would rejoice! But guessing at his strong, alien heart has won me nothing_. “What would you have me hear?”

“First I would have you know how our conversation came to be. You have noted, no doubt, that dwarves can be close about their thoughts when they wish it. I would not have pressed this noble member of our company without cause – to do so would have made him retreat.”

Legolas shook his head, hair flashing like light around his face, and laughed at this wrongheaded notion. “Dwarves do not retreat. Say rather that he would have hastily built walls of gruffness and suspicion and that in them you could find no chink to serve as handhold and only a steep face to scale.”

“Just so,” the Ranger agreed. “I was saved from such a climb because he came to speak to me as a man who has dwelled long among elf-kind.”

“ _Rivendell elves_.”

“Your blood kin,” Aragorn returned. “Though you make your home among the elves of the wood. But you may rest easy. I was careful to tell your new-made friend that the secrets of elves were held entire by no mortal man, least of all Aragorn son of Arathorn. Still, he would have my counsel, asking if illness comes to elf kind.”

Something hurried through elven eyes at his words – something of pleasure and wonder and exasperation together. “It is a great gift, to find a friend who is as wise as he is true.”

“But you would wish that such wisdom was not turned against yourself,” Aragorn translated, moving dark branches aside to gain a clear view of the opposing bank. Nothing moved there.

“How did he answer when you told him that though we may be captured and killed and even poisoned that sickness rarely touches us?”

“‘I am comforted, then,’ said Gimli,” Aragorn quoted. “Though he then said that he had fewer guess as to what ailed ‘our elf’ than before.”

“Our?” Legolas cried, beauty and distress making a strange music of his voice.

The man at his side only smiled, his grim features brightened by so wide a grin. “Mark you that word as well? It stood out to me also. I pressed him on it and met no walls, and only the slightest bit of grumbling. ‘He belongs to our company, does he not?’ Gimli asked of me, and I could not say him nay. But I do not think it was our fellowship that he was thinking of when he spoke that brief word of having. Dwarves are very careful with words that convey possession, you know. It would not do to speak of another wright’s tools as your own.”

“It is a small word to hang one’s hopes upon,” answered the elf.

“Perhaps,” Aragorn agreed. “But this was not the end of the words we shared. I asked him if he had sought the answer from your lips. ‘Aye,’ said our dwarf. ‘And he turns my thoughts away with talk of light on the water or remembrances of Lorien. He is not skilled at such deception, but I would not bring him additional worry or discomfort.’”

Legolas made a soft sound and said something in his own tongue about the lies that were spoken when it was said that the eyes of dwarves were not keen.

“He has a poetic tongue, does Gloin’s son,” Aragorn added. “Or, at least, concern for an elf would make him poet as well as axe-wielder. This, too, he said of you: ‘He reminds me of a pale stag sometimes, poised between a drowning lake at his back and pain at the hands of pursuing hunters.’ ”

“I shall have to remember that bit of poetry,” said the elf, the smile on his lips set off by the uncertainty in the depths of his eyes. “If ever again I stand before my father, he would be pleased to hear that such was said of his son. Stags have ever seemed noble beasts to him. Such a compliment might be enough to make him forget that the speaker was naught but a dwarf.”

 _Now we hit upon more certain ground_ , thought Aragorn. Though only one blade of grass be bent, this is a path I can read. “Whatever the thoughts and beliefs of Thranduil, you would not speak of him as ‘naught but a dwarf,’ or these dark days of the world have cast some illusion upon my eyes. The two of you have buried old prejudices and learned the truth of one another. Have you come to fear old hatreds anew as barriers?”

“There is much between us that might prove barrier enough.” He gestured vaguely at the wide world. “This quest, his mortality…” _My own quaking heart_.

“Then perhaps I should say what else was told to me before you seek your rest. It was not only illness that our dwarf asked after.”

“Our again?” asked the elf, thinking that Aragorn meant to use the word as a spur, pricking him for his cowardice. _I have seen too many ages of the world to either be ruled by fear or goaded so by mortals, and yet it seems that I will suffer both this night_!

“I would rather say ‘your,’ my friend, but that change will be yours to bring about it if you will. I will say only that Gimli also asked about the love of an elf. ‘If he were a dwarf,’ he said, ‘I would say that he has found his craft and turns all thought toward what he will become. That, or I would say that has found great love. But he is no dwarf, so all my guesses are but bright coins cast into darkened pools that never yield either answer or wish.’”

A very unelven sound answered him, as if Legolas had tried to draw in a breath and found himself strangled on the very air. “And what then said you, Aragorn?”

“Nothing that should move your hand to either your quiver or the hilts of your knives. Only that elves love but once. He feared that you might have found such a love in Rivendell or Lorien, and grieved that you had left it there. I answered that if you had found such a love, that companion would have journeyed with us rather than leave your side. I left him to make his own comparisons, but if he is as wise as we both believe, then he will start to consider the pledges you have made to one another – to journey together until the end of this quest.”

“Those were pledges of friendship and of protection,” the elf defended himself, but he did not sound convincing even to his own ears. “It would be a cruel thing indeed, to leave a dwarf alone in this company with no elf to look after him.”

Aragorn laughed heartily at that. “If you asked, I believe Gimli would see it from quite another angle. It is you who are being protected, my woodland friend, and woe to the orc that would seek to harm you before his eyes.”

Their watch was almost done and though the dawn was far off, Legolas thought that he could feel the promise of it just the same – a pale and gentle shining that matched his smile. “He would see the danger coming to me before I chanced to see it, I imagine. Though many things are yet unknown to me, I have learned that dwarven eyes are very keen.”

And with that, the elf returned to the drowsing, dozing company, Boromir and Merry standing to take the place of elf and man. Aragorn watched his elven friend walk away and cast gentle wishes in his wake. _May you be given the means to see with the eyes of a dwarf, my friend, and realize that your affection is returned! And if such sight may not be given unto you, then to Gimli I wish joy at the sight of you, for such a dedicated watch as his must needs be rewarded. May happiness come to you both when his keen eyes finally realize just what it is that they look upon!_

To be continued!


	8. Chapter 8: Amon Hen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some dialogue is taken from The Fellowship of the Ring, and Neil Peart’s lyrics from the song “Panacea” inspired a few lines about Gimli’s heart. Also, I apologize that the action of orc combat did not make it into this update. I struggled with this chapter, I confess, and will deliver action in the next update!

**An Ounce of Perception**

**(against an age of obscure)**

**Part 8: Amon Hen**

 

“I should vote for Minas Tirith,” said the elf.

Hearing him, Gimli was grateful that he was not smoking. It would have been a pity to waste his quickly dwindling supply of pipeweed by choking upon it. He was grateful, too, that his axes were absent from his hands. Shame would have burned in his cheeks if he had been careless enough to cut himself in his surprise. He hadn’t done that since he had been a very young dwarrow training under Dwalin. Glancing about their impromptu council, the dwarf saw that Aragorn was almost as surprised as him. They traded glances and Gimli gave a slow nod. He and Legolas had pledged their friendship and loyalty one to the other, but the elf was also loyal to Isildur’s heir and would fight to see Aragorn regain his throne.

 _How it is, Lord_ , thought Gimli, _that I can sound the depths of his loyalty and you cannot? Can a dwarf learn more of elfkind than a man can? Were you not raised in Rivendell_?

With that thought, the dwarf found his memory turning back to the Last Homely House. There, he and Legolas had sworn alike to represent their people, to go as far as the passes of the mountains, if not beyond. Once, Gimli would have waited for the elf to make his choice and then vowed to match him step for step and league for league, unwilling to leave the quest to a Firstborn. He smiled at the memory of this lost version of himself. _That_ dwarf would have stuck to the elf’s shadow like a cocklebur merely to see tightness come into his jaw, to hear him muttering fiercely about his obstinacy, his homely features, and his rude mannerisms. Now it was not stubbornness that drove him to follow where elven boots walked, soft and unheard upon the earth. Speaking only to himself, Gimli had called it folly, this driving force. He knew, too, that it went by another name, but it was a name that he dared not voice yet.

Besieged by such thoughts and by an uncertainty as deep as it was constant – what _was_ a dwarf to do with his love for an elf? – Gimli was half-surprised when the dignified, craggy, and devoted face of Gloin son of Groin rose within his mind. There in his memory his father spoke, saying, “The hardest moments you will face, my dearest boy, will be those in which love and duty clash.”

Only twice before had Gimli faced such contests between his heart and his given word: once when Gloin had forbidden him to accompany him on the quest for Erebor (how his heart had cried out to stand at the side of his cousins!) and once in Moria, when his heart had bidden him to kneel at Balin’s tomb when his axe was needed to defend the Fellowship. Here, his duty was clear enough, but, before he could speak the truth of it, his heart rose up into his mouth to choke him, tasting at once of iron and of rose petals.

 _My heart is with the elf_ , thought Gimli, bewildered at what the rebellious organ dared. How could so much audacity exist within so small a beating thing? Still, the dwarf did not try to lie to himself. _My heart is with the elf_ , he repeated in his thoughts. _And so will it be for all the ages of the world. If we must walk separate paths, then my heart will remain in his care. My body will grieve the loss of it, more than like, and little enough worth it may be to an elf, but I have come to care for him and so can do no less_.

Swallowing down the taste of his heart’s blood, Gimli said that he, too, would choose Minas Tirith if the White City was the choice of Legolas Greenleaf. He knew that the elf would not hear the tribute he was making, but it was proper that he should make it. _It is my wish to be ever at your side, but_ … “But I will not turn my feet thither if the Ringbearer chooses another path,” he said at last. He ached with the knowledge that his words might signal a parting from Legolas, but he permitted no pain to enter his face.

A fierce brightness came then into the changeable eyes of the elf – a smile shimmered behind his fair face. “And I too will go with him,” said Legolas. “It would be faithless now to say farewell.”

A shock traveled through the dwarf’s mighty frame as he heard words that he has once spoken leave the lips of the elf. He knew that Legolas saw it; his smile deepened and brightened at once. _He speaks not of Frodo_ , thought Gimli, heart beating wild with hope, but for me! Legolas would follow, would stand at his side on even the darkest roads. Hope rekindled in his breast, Gimli looked for a moment on distant days and imagined that the world was won back from darkness and renewed. How could it not be, when one such as he had won the friendship of this bright and smiling creature? And having won friendship, might it not be possible on some distant day to win affection as well?

But then Aragorn spoke again and his voice was grim, as if he could see into dark days yet to come. “If you would let me choose, then I should appoint three companions,” said Isildur’s heir. As he continued, Gimli shook his head; it seemed that every member of their company was destined to astonish him on this day. If he were yet the dwarf he had been in Rivendell, he would have heard Aragorn’s words with pleasure as well as with surprise. He, a dwarf, was being chosen over an elf!

For all of his surprise, Gimli could yet see wisdom in Aragorn’s choices. It was right that he should be chosen to protect the Ringbearer, for it was his father and his father’s companions who had travelled with Bilbo Baggins, protecting him and protected by him at need. The name of the hobbit who had dared to face down a dragon was still spoken with awe and renown in the halls of Erebor. (Other tales, too, were spoken – that a love had come to exist between the King Under the Mountain and one in whose veins no drop of dwarven blood ran. Though he had lived most of his life with the dwarves of Thorin’s company, it had been hard to learn the truth of such tales; Gimli only knew that any mentioning of that sundered love, if love it had been, made the eyes of what remained of those noble thirteen very sad. Gimli’s mind had turned often to those tales as an elf had slowly come to conquer his heart, comforted by the idea that he was not the first Durin to love outside of his race.)

Gimli agreed, too, that the gentle, young hobbits should be returned to their homeland, but he was grateful that he need not voice his opinion. Well he remembered the pain of being excluded from the great quest to reclaim Erebor. Doubtless, he would have fallen in battle. If so skilled a warrior as Thorin Oakenshield was taken, his younger self would have had little chance. Still, he regretted, wishing that he might have been there to defend his kin. Pippin and Merry carried similar wishes in their breasts – to be of use to Frodo on his dark quest or to die to see him safe. Such wishes had Gimli’s every sympathy, but he believed that the two younger hobbits would be best sent with Boromir, who had come to care for them, and then onward to the green hills that knew the tread of their feet.

Turning his thoughts from the gentle Shire folk, Gimli saw that Legolas’s face had gone pale and that his eyes were flashing like a blade at-forge. Aragorn noticed as well and amended his speech, adding, that the elf might be included in the ideal company “if Legolas is not willing to leave us.”

The hobbits protested then at being left out and the rest urged that Frodo should be recalled. At that moment Boromir reappeared and his words sent panic racing through the company. The hobbits dashed off, seeking Frodo, even as Aragorn sought to keep order among them. As their fellowship fractured, Gimli saw the elf steady the quiver on his back and count the arrows there by feel. Elven eyes locked with his, questioning, insistent. “I will go with you,” said the dwarf. His “always,” was unspoken but quite perfectly understood.

They ran off into danger side by side.


	9. Chapter 9: On embattled banks

**An Ounce of Perception**

**(against an age of obscure)**

**Part Nine: On the embattled banks**

As they ran, the elf and dwarf could hear the voices of the hobbits crying out for the missing Ringbearer. Those cries reminded Legolas of the warning bells that had summoned him to patrol in Eryn Lasgalen; they were as a spur to his feet. Breath coming too fast, he was reminded of Gimli’s image of him: the stag caught between two types of violence. _Something harries us here, drives us apart_. Yet, whatever the source of its dark power and despite the alarm it kindled in every nerve, the elf was pleased to see that it was little match for the stubbornness of dwarves. Though weighted with heavy armor and the ring of throwing and fighting axes hanging from his belt, Gimli never lagged behind. Suddenly the grim atmosphere was lightened by the unexpected and radiant sound of elven laughter.

The sound stopped Gimli in his tracks. “Since one of our company is missing and the very air feels touched with dread, I would like to share in your jest, elf.”

Legolas recovered himself and offered an apologetic smile. “Say at least that you have no fears that my jest concerns you. You would have feared so, once.” Gimli made as if to give him a piercing look but mischief made his eyes shine; the oppressive feeling of menace seemed to edge back. “You mark me as one quick to take offense, elf? Well, I cannot fault you for speaking the truth. Such is the nature of dwarves. But tell me now of elves and of what makes you laugh on so grim a hunt as this.”

Even as they spoke, they alternated between searching the ground for some sign of Frodo and scanning the horizon. “I was thinking, friend dwarf, that I would not have minded the endless raids and patrols that my father insisted on using to train me to battle as much if you had been there to fight at my side.”

Gimli recognized the magnitude of the compliment; Legolas was marking them as well-matched warriors. If danger was not so near as to make the back of his neck tingle and prickle, he might have pointed at that battle was not the only arena in which they might be compatible. “We would surely have been the terror of spiders and orcs alike,” he agreed, pleased by the images that such words called to mind. He could imagine each patrol as a game with the elf competing against him for every kill. So violent a competition appealed to a war-trained dwarf, especially since orcs and monster spiders merited no sympathy.

Instead of confirming the dwarf’s words, Legolas froze at his side, and when next he spoke in his own tongue, Gimli needed no translation. “How many?” asked the dwarf. When the elf remained still, he tugged at his arm. “How near? And what kind? We have to warn the others that they’ve crossed the river!”

“Aragorn will be seeking to lead the others back to the hilltop.”

“But it is not toward the hilltop that you turn your feet. You wish to draw off the orcs?”

Legolas nodded. “If you will fight beside me. It may give Aragorn time to collect the hobbits and set about defending them.”

“Aye,” Gimli agreed. “We’re a better match for orcs than four young hobbits. So I say again, can you make out how many?”

“Perhaps fifteen – they run as a group. There are smaller mountain goblins mixed in with the great orcs. We will soon be in their line of sight.”

The dwarf’s eyes flicked over the ground, noting the placement of boulders and the nature of the ground. He gripped the elf’s arm to turn him. “Come. We should use the cover of these trees. They may think we number more than two and slow their attack. Your arrows fly fast enough for a host of archers.”

“A dwarf seeking the tree line?” Legolas asked as they ran for the shadow of the leaves. “Do you become elvish by our association, mellon-nin?”

Gimli harrumphed at that. “We shall see what these mountain goblins think. They hate dwarves beyond measure.”

_Their hatred shall be no match for my care_ , thought the archer, eyes focused on the orc pack. If mountain goblins sought to threaten Gimli, then mountain goblins would he slay.

They heard the rough-shod feet of the orcs even before they glimpsed their snarling faces and hooked and gleaming fangs. Feet braced for the work of axe-wielding, Gimli did not hear Legolas knock his first arrow. Quarrel after quarrel found its mark. The goblins staggered as they ran and fell heavily to the earth, their still warm bodies kicked and trampled by those orcs that came on. Gimli thought to growl in frustration – there would be little need for axes if Legolas felled all of their foes – but then he saw one of the great, dark orcs change its stance.

_What would Dwalin see_? he asked himself. _What means this shift_? Horror fast-followed realization. _They are not all armed alike, these orcs. That is a long range weapon_.

The elf did not notice when a short spear began to soar toward his pale throat.

Gimli took three steps. Positioned between the archer and his quarry, he felt Legolas’s deadly bolts whistle past his body. Though he knew that Death stood close at hand, he felt pride instead of fear. Any dwarf would have counted it an honor to die defending that which he loved best.

It was only as the spear drew nearer that Gimli realized his mistake. _Curses! The aim is too high! The spear may yet fly over my head and find its mark_!

Forced to aim around the dwarf, Legolas came to realize that he was being guarded by a living shield. He cried out in fear just as Gimli reversed his hold on one of his axes and lifted it, blade down, into the air.

The sound of the spear point entering the hard and polished wood was as loud as the ring of a blade on armor. The spear quivered a moment and then Gimli cut it down and snapped it. The orc that had thrown it screamed its frustration through slavering jaws. The dwarf laughed in triumph and saw the elf gape at him even as he reached for another arrow.

When the remaining orcs came upon them, the two friends moved back to back as if they had been fighting together for an age. Pale knives flashed into the elf’s hands and danced, their motions a steely counterpoint to the whirling arcs of Gimli’s axes. Black, orc blood spotted the garb of elf and dwarf alike.

Legolas had always loved battle. To many elves, the art of war was necessity rather than pleasure and to engage in combat was to lower oneself. Few elves ever knew blood-lust or battle-fever, fewer still felt every sense driven to a higher pitch by fighting as part of a pair. Still, he wished that the battle would calm enough to let him speak. There was much that he wanted to tell his dwarven friend. _No elf_ , he would say, _no matter how long he or she served at my side_ , _ever dared to stand between my bow and my enemies. No one has ever trusted me so much. No one has ever sought to buy my safety at the cost of their life_. _And you did it without thought_ , _as if you had always had my life in your keeping._

After a time, all that the two warriors could hear was the sound of their own labored breathing. The orcs were dead at their feet.

“How do you fare, friend-dwarf?”

“I am whole and hale, and content that we kept these foul things from the rest of our company. It is my hope that Aragorn has gotten the rest of them into the boats. Are you uninjured?”

“Through your skill. You might have spoken your warning instead of spinning your axe. What prompted so crafty a plan? What drove you to stand so between danger and an elf?”

For perhaps the first time in their long association, the elf was privileged to witness true dwarven shock. Gimli’s mouth fell open and his thick, ruddy brows bristled above flashing eyes. Flecks of black blood stood out as his face drained of color. “Are you in earnest, elf, or do you jest? Know you not after all this time? Do you still not see? Do you not realize that I l,”

The mighty call of a horn drowned out anything else he would have said. “The horn of Boromir!” cried Legolas.

“He is in need,” said Gimli, the words of his heart forgotten.

Weapons still in their hands, they ran toward the sound.

 

To be continued!


	10. Chapter 10: Forth the Three Hunters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some dialogue was written by the master himself.

**An Ounce of Perception**

**(against an age of obscure)**

**Part Ten: Forth the Three Hunters**

 

"Maybe there is no right choice.”

Hearing those words fall from the lips of Gloin’s son, Legolas knew that the dwarf’s heart was shrouded. Gimli could be just as grim as all of his folk were said to be, but such dark moods were neither his habit nor his sanctuary. Unaware of the elven scrutiny that had chosen his frame for its focus, Gimli looked upon Gondor’s favored, fallen son. His eyes were playing foul tricks and Boromir’s familiar features seemed to waver and shift, as if under the touch of flame. Even as he watched, the man’s proud face sharpened; when Gimli looked again, he wore the face of the elf. The dwarf clenched tight his eyelids against the unwanted vision, as if against too strong a light. _My fears rule my very sight_ , he marveled.

Once, he had feared to drive Legolas from his side with a love that was unsought and undesired. Now he imagined the elf’s immortal life undone. Such imaginings drew a vow from him. _No_ , he told these new, dark terrors. _Even if he could care for me, I must not entangle him with a life that must end in death. He has shown himself the worthiest of all elves by raising stones to my kin, but I will not have shed tears over my fall. I am no fit mate for an immortal. There is no place for my foolish love on a quest such as this._

Resolved, he set to the work of cutting branches to bear Boromir’s body to the falls. His heart cried out at his cruelty. _Already have I seen graves raised to my people in the Golden Wood_ , he told the pain-wracked thing. _What if he falls?There is a lesson in the broken frame of Boromir of Gondor. Even the mightiest of warriors may meet his end in this quest._

_  
_ He saw again the face of his friend stilled by death and swore that he would prevent it if he could. I will build no bower of green leaves over the fallen body of an elf. I will steal no touch from his soft and golden tresses when Death has taken him beyond all feeling.

Legolas watched Gimli at his work and stopped him before he would have taken the logs and branches back to the waterside. “Your words were not finished when the horn sounded. What words went unspoken between us?”

The dwarf straightened his spine and lifted his chin, as if to make his very body a barrier against all that he felt and all that he kept hidden. “Nothing that can matter now.”

The elf’s head tilted in question. Gimli could see that he wanted to press, but did not know how. The dwarf had allowed him to keep his silence. “Now _you_ are becoming a riddle,” he said at last.

“There is no riddle to it,” Gimli replied, shaving the logs of small branches and knots. “Those small folk are in danger and I can think of nothing else until we know them for living or for dead.” He shuddered as he thought of how very small a hobbit cairn might be.

Legolas stepped forward, but stopped shy of touching his shoulder. “We will save them," he insisted. "Aragorn will have a plan. Even if you cannot feel hope on your own, will you not share in mine?”

It would have been ungenerous to refuse the request and Gimli felt his heart twist at the sight of the elf’s open face and the soft, steady glow of friendship in his eyes. “Aye,” he managed. The single syllable cut into the softness of his throat. _I would share in your very life_ , came the unwanted thought, the impossible dream.

Then, together, they were dragging the branches toward the river. Gimli felt elven eyes alight upon him and knew that Legolas was not yet done. “And if we do save them, then will you tell me?” One skilled in the watching of elves would have seen the pulse at his throat thrash when he asked. The woodland prince knew that he was taking a gamble; he fully expected Gimli to agree but only on the condition that he also break his silence.

“I cannot see so far ahead,” said the dwarf at last. “I will promise nothing when all is in shadow.”

"You drew me once out of grief, mellon nin, and I have not forgotten it. Come, let us do honor to Boromir and I will comfort you if I can, even if I cannot bring you cheer.” _Or yet find bravery enough to offer you my heart_.

 

***

As the songs finished and Boromir’s body floated away, the elf took his hand. Gimli was still marveling at the softness of that quick, comforting touch when Aragorn cried, “Forth the Three Hunters!”

 

To be continued!


	11. Chapter 11: The Best Use of Time

**An Ounce of Perception**

**(against an age of obscure)**

**Part Eleven: The Best Use of Time**

 

The light from the young moon was as pale as a scattering of clear gems; as night fell, it absorbed and fragmented its brilliance and seemed to leave the shadows greater than before. The fire that the three hunters had kindled against cold and hunger seemed to hunch its shoulders and to try to hide itself against the earth, afraid of who might see it and be drawn near. Aragorn prowled in a wide circle around the camp and his sword was loose in its sheath.

Gimli lay huddled against the earth, his sturdy form covered by his cloak, his mind full with worried thoughts for the Shirelings. He had argued for stopping to sleep on the plains, but he feared that sleep would shimmer out of reach until the time for his watch came around.

_He clasped my hand._

His jaw tightened at the unwelcome thought. _Frodo and Sam walk into darkness greater than you can even imagine_ , he reminded himself. _Merry and Pippin may be dead at the foul hands of orcs. This is no time for your fanciful imaginings!_

His heart had grown impatient with such gruffness and refused to heed his harsh words; it had always had something of a poetic disposition and it believed that joy and song and fancy were most needed just when the darkness grew insufferable. _How many ages of the world have passed_ , it stubbornly mused, _since one of elvenkind took a dwarrow by the hand and offered comfort?_ _Might you not think on it and rejoice? Might you not answer what has been given?_

Gimli’s jaw clenched. Fleeting as it had been, Legolas’s touch still warmed him; his mind still buzzed with wonder. He longed to ask the elf what he had meant by it. Had those long fingers curled for a moment in a caress, accepting every callous they found, or did he only dream it so, embellishing the memory as he revisited it?

He was startled almost to reaching for his axes when the voice of the creature he had been thinking on came to his ears. “I can hear your teeth chattering all the way over here, mellon nin.”

Gimli made a fierce sound at that and burrowed his head into his corded arms. “Dwarves do not shiver on clear, cool nights with no threat of snow, elf.”

Light-footed as ever, Legolas crossed the distance between them to drop down at the dwarf’s side. “Well, perhaps elves shiver,” he offered. “And perhaps a shivering elf might tease his dwarf friend for the sake of his pride.”

Gimli’s eyes were too wide in his face and he dared not turn to see the elf’s moon-pale form or quicksilver smile. “That I can well believe,” he said at last, voice as gruff as it had been in Rivendell. “Would such a frail, trembling creature as this elf you speak of welcome what warmth a dwarf could give?” _Could what I am ever hope to still your shivering, lovely elf?_

The elf was laughing; Gimli swallowed, still looking away, grateful that his words had not given offense. “I said nothing about frailty, mellon nin, though perhaps your dwarven ears play tricks on you,”

“Not having points and all,” Gimli interrupted.

“Exactly,” the elf agreed. “So hear me now: can this elf – strong, vital, and resistant to pain – be warmed at your side, or must I burrow into the ashes of the fire you have built?”

“I would hate to see your fairness dimmed by ash,” Gimli said at last, proud that the shaking of his heart lent no quaver to his speech.

This time Gimli _felt_ the elf’s laughter move through him as Legolas curled up at his side. Such wild joy thrilled through him that could only think: _a dwarf might die from this_.

_Aye_ , his well-contented heart returned with something like a purr, _and welcome the dying_.

The stars wheeled above them and the wind played games among the grasses of the plains and Gimli imagined that the elf at his shoulder had entered that peculiar, elvish form of sleeping when Legolas spoke again. “You are as warm as the famous forges of your mountain home,” he murmured. “Do all your years of working metal make you so?”

_Do all of your years beneath branches make you as fresh-smelling and as cool as new leaves under the first touch of rain_? Gimli wondered in turn, but he did not speak.

Legolas did not seem to need an answer. “I wish you would be comforted,” he told the dwarf. “Your body seems as rigid as your armor; you are like the sculpture of a dwarf in your dread.”

_It is not dread_ , thought the dwarrow. _I simply do not know how to breathe when you rest beside me, your body nuzzled into mine. If I move, will this fragile moment not shatter all around us? Will my hands not be bloodied as I seek to gather up its beauty and its brokenness?_

“They are not dead,” the elf continued. “And whatever fears we harbor, we will see them freed.”

“They will be ill-used if the orcs make it to that dark tower,” Gimli said at last. Better to speak of these fears than of the fears of his heart.

“We may catch them before then,” said the elf, reaching over him to grip his shoulder in an offer of strength.

“And defeat them?” asked Gimli, mostly to cover a brief bout of trembling at feeling that touch again. “Fifteen orcs we might defeat together, you and I. Perhaps even two score. But one hundred?”

There was a smile in the elf’s voice. “I am certain that Aragorn may be counted on to slay a few.”

A pebble clinked off of dwarven armor. “Aragorn may be counted on to train his sword on his companions if they will not permit him to seek his rest in such safety as he has found,” groused the Ranger. During his rounds, he had determined that they could safely rest without setting a watch. The plains were empty for leagues all around.

“You missed,” Gimli told him, rolling over to point out his companion. “The one that sings in his sleep is right here.”

Aragorn just groaned and burrowed further into his bedroll.

The elf and the dwarf laughed together at his distress, but sought to lower their voices.

“Twice now I have been an elven shield,” said Gimli at last. In laughing, he had ended up facing the elf again and Legolas’s eyes gleamed at him from the dark.

“And still you will not tell me what words you would have spoken when last you shielded me?”

“Nay,” said the dwarf. “We must see through this chase.” But just when Legolas feared that he would retreat again into silence, the dwarf summoned all of his strength and answered the gift of the touch he had been given at the riverside. “But I will say this, Legolas-friend, I count it a privilege to act as a shield to you – strong, vital, and resistant to pain as you are – and would take it as my craft if it were possible, forsaking alike the gems my mother taught me to shape and the ore my father taught me to mine. Will that serve?”

Sitting up, the elf seemed to shiver in the wind. His ancient eyes were very wide. “Aye,” he said at last, seeming not to realize that he had borrowed the word from the dwarf. “That will serve.”

When neither the dwarf nor the elf found the courage to say more, Aragorn brought a hand to his head and wondered whether to chuckle or to weep.


	12. Part 12: Near to the Mountain-marches

**An Ounce of Perception**

**(against an age of obscure)**

**Part 12: Near to the Mountain-marches**

The first watch was taken by the elven prince. His long strides carried him quickly through the twilight and he sang to the great, brooding trees in a tongue they had nearly forgotten, so long had it been since elves had walked the borders of Fanghorn Forest. Too overwrought to sleep, Gimli and Aragorn smoked just beyond the touch of the shadow of the trees. The dwarf chuckled as he caught sight of the distant elf. “Leave it to an elf to take joy in a forest that is cursed.”

The eyes of the Ranger were practically closed; his smile stretched up to meet them. He wished, as he had so often, that Gandalf was with them. Yet, this time, his wish was not born of a need for wisdom or because the mantle of leadership wore too heavily on his shoulders. If Gandalf had been with them, he and the wizard would have bet on if and when the dwarf would mention the elf; Aragorn believed that he would have won. “Elves can be wondrous strange folk,” he agreed. “Lordly as kings one moment and then merry as children. Wise and full of pain they sometimes seem and then burning with fierce life, weapons held in hand.” It was not a neat trap and he regretted it, but the speed of his feet over the last few days had drained him far more than he had permitted to show; he had little strength left for subterfuge.

Gimli seemed to squint at him for a moment, but the dwarf said nothing about the poor craftsmanship of his words. “Eomer will not soon forget his first meeting with an elf,” he agreed.

Legs stretched against soft earth and boots resting beside feet imprisoned too long, Aragorn felt his heart lighten enough to tease. “Is that pride I hear in your tone, Gimli?”

This time the squint was more pronounced. “Aye, and what of it? May not a friend take pride in the skill of another? Have _you_ ever seen an arrow fitted so quickly?”

“It was a splendid swift maneuver, even for an elf. For all the long years of our friendship, he has never reacted in quite the same way when my life was threatened.”

Gimli glowered so darkly at that that Aragorn was forced to hold up a hand as a ward. “Peace. I speak no word against your elf. I only wish you to mark the act as a novel one.”

“ _My_ elf?”

“Do you not think of him thus?”

“My thoughts are my own,” growled the dwarf.

“There is a threat in your tone that would work on one who knew you less well. I seek not the hoard of your thoughts and whatever secrets gleam like gems among them. But surely you will not say that the gesture was _common_!?”

 

“He is a prince of the woodland realm. Nothing about him would I call common, from the speed of his draw to the shine of his eyes.”

Aragorn sighed. “The stubbornness of dwarves I am well acquainted with. Now it seems that I am to be schooled in the art of dwarven deflection as well.”

Though the dwarf’s look was grudging, his words were not. “It was nobly done.”

“But?” The Ranger could hear the “but.”

“I would not have him cast away his immortal life so easily. If you had not intervened, or if the blood of those riders had been quicker to kindle…”

“Legolas has lived long enough to know the worth of his life. He has the right to spend it as he will and in defense of what he chooses.”

“There are words beneath your words. You think that he ‘chooses’ a mere mortal, then?”

“There is nothing ‘mere’ about a lord of dwarves who can run without stopping for three days in full armor, win the respect of the Lady Galadriel, and overcome the prejudices of ages past.”

Gimli coughed and fussed a bit at the praise before admitting, “Perhaps not. But what are the short years of my life against the vastness of forever?”

“I have been told that forever is a cruel span if you spend it longing.”

“And is living longing to be marked less cruel than an endless life cut short by love?”

“Your short years may be years of joy. And when you have returned to the Halls of your fathers, Legolas may turn to the sea and carry your memory with him.”

Gimli made a disparaging sound. “Ah, but what elf in those undying lands would listen to his memories? His people would scorn him for such an alliance.”

Aragorn gave him an elegant, questioning look. “While your folk would meet the news with open rejoicing?”

“That they would _not_ ,” said the dwarf, “but neither would they censure me for the choice of my heart. But the elves… he is a _prince_ , Aragorn. That means there is a _King_ in the background. Kings usually have plans for their sons.”

The Ranger threw back his head in a laugh. “Legolas Thranduilion has been defying his father’s wishes and disrupting his father’s plans longer than the two of us together have been drawing breath, my friend. Thranduil may be wroth, but I am sure that Legolas would stand before you there, too, just as he did with the Rohirrim. You may rest easy on that score, at least, and be free of that measure of fear.”

“You menfolk like to belabor a point,” the dwarf told him. Did Aragorn truly imagine that the elf’s defense of him had not registered? It was a crowning moment in his life, second only to the gift of Galadriel herself. “And there are things enough to fear, even if we leave out the matter of the dark power rising in the East and the black tower near at hand and all of the dangers that may find us between this place and the end of our quest. For all that I have learned, there is much that I still do not know. Will my ignorance and my missteps wear upon his care – if care indeed he feels – until I have exhausted the store of his heart? Will he miss the sameness of spirit that he might have with one of his own kind? Will I become a burden to him as I age and as he does not? All of these fears crowd in on my heart, Aragorn. I would not be the great regret of his long life.”

“He will return soon and the next watch will be mine, Gimli. Though I cannot be your leader in this, still I urge you to speak these fears to him and ask for an answer. The days may be darkening and we may all know the end of all we love, but you may yet claim some happiness in the shadow.”

A silence fell between them so deep that Gimli did not even hear the man rise to his feet to take his turn under the wheeling stars. Nor did he hear Legolas return; rather, his heart leapt in that beloved presence and everything in him turned toward the soft shining that the elf carried in his skin. The subtle motion made him smile beneath the fiery fringe of his beard. _I am become as a flower that turns lifts its face to starlight instead of the light of the sun._

“You should be sleeping, mellon nin,” said Legolas by way of greeting. Then he flashed a smile so bright that it confused the moths drifting beneath the trees. “Unless, having rested at the side of one of the Eldar, you find yourself restless in the absence of an elf.”

Gimli answered his smile. “You do make a fine windbreak, it must be said.”

“Though you tease, mellon nin, think not that I am blind to the lines about your eyes. Do you fear yet for the hobbits? Or does some other grief press in upon your heart?”

“I do fear for them,” he admitted. “Though they may be beyond either my fear or my hope. But my heart is full with thoughts of y,”

He got no farther, for they were no longer alone. There just on the edge of the firelight stood an old, bent man, leaning on a staff, and wrapped in a great cloak; his wide-brimmed hat was pulled down over his eyes. Aragorn had returned and stood now with his friends, speaking a word of welcome to this stranger even as all three of the hunters wondered if they had been caught by Saruman at the very borders of his lands. Then the old man disappeared – followed by their horses. They were left only with the cold wind and the menacing trees and words left, again, unspoken.

 To be continued!


	13. Part 13: The Golden Hall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've altered the canon with the addition of a few hours -- the company now stays a night at Meduseld instead of riding immediately to war.

**Ounce of Perception**

**(against an age of obscure)**

**Part 13: The Golden Hall**

 

“Go where you must go, and hope!” had the white wizard told them, setting them on the path to war. Now they had left their saddles and dwarf and elf lay down side by side as had become their recent custom. Silence gathered around them and the dwarf positioned his body so as to protect the slighter elf from the bite of a rising chill wind, even as the elf extended his blanket to cover them both. They made a strange sight as they rested together, but even the cold moon would have smiled at their obvious friendship, the way they leaned toward one another even in sleep. With a smile hidden in his eyes, Aragorn watched Gandalf the White as he studied them. Great deeds had they spoken of – the path of the great Ring of Power, Gandalf’s battle with the Balrog, and the fate of all of Middle Earth and its free peoples – and now a bit of Gandalf the Grey began to peek through all of his shining and power. “What is it that I now see before us, Aragorn?”

It grew harder to hold the smile from his mouth. “Surely Galadriel spoke of them.”

“Yes. Gimli will be spoken of by the people of the Golden Wood for many years after he has returned to stone, good lad. But for all of Galadriel’s words, I did not expect to find an elf and a dwarf curled up side by side, and yet somehow still at arm’s length for all of that.”

“You bade them be friends,” Aragorn reminded him.

“So I did, so I did. And so have they become. But what now stands between them? I can almost feel it flickering.”

The heir of kings gave the wizard a wry look. “I would welcome something so faint as a _flickering_. Those two have taken as much of my strength as our hunt. Where once they fought each other, now they fight their regard _for_ one another.”

To his surprise, the wizard became gentle and fatherly, joyful and fond. “Light may yet be found in dark days, then. And what began in sadness may not end thus.”

“More riddles? And I thought to see you disappointed. Your hopes for them were high when last we spoke.”

“They are high yet. If they have come this far, Gimli Gloinul and Legolas Thranduilion will come to see the truth of one another, weary though they may have made you.” His satisfaction was deep. _If the bond was less true, they would not fight it as hard against its pull._

 “Weary, yes,” said Aragorn and for a moment his face was that of grimly smiling Strider rather than that of a king who had not yet come into his own. “But of all the beings that walk the earth, I could have no more loyal companions, and _would_ have no others given the choice. And I heartily wish that what happiness can exist in these times will come at last to them, blind as they both can be.”

The wizard clapped him on the shoulder. “It is a good wish. Now, let us seek what rest we can before we come to Theoden’s seat and the challenges that await us there.”

***

Theoden, his strength renewed, took counsel of Gandalf and of Aragorn as his kingdom readied for war. Though they represented their respective peoples, Gimli and Legolas could offer little but their axe and bow, and they were grateful when Theoden granted them the hospitality of his hall. An attendant showed them through Meduseld. “T-T-Theoden-King said that you were to have a place to rest and to wash,” he stammered, eyes wide. Legolas and Gimli shared a smile; they were clearly the first elf and dwarf that the young page had ever seen, and he seemed to mark them as fierce strangers whose displeasure it might be dangerous to incur. “Would you prefer s-s-separate chambers?”

Gimli looked to his friend. “You shared a horse with me, friend.” He did not mention the blanket that had come to be tangled around them both the night before. “Would you object to a hearth?”

The elf’s eyes sparkled as he told the page that a single chamber would be more than adequate.

So it was that Gimli and Legolas came to be the temporary residents of a room with a well-swept floor, a thatched roof, and walls draped with faded tapestries depicting deeds of great renown. For the first time in many days, Gimli was not tasked with kindling the fire that was soon warming the room; the sweet-smelling smoke drifted toward the ceiling and twined around the horse heads adorning the rafters. Copper tubs were brought in and filled with steaming water. As the room was readied around them, the elf and the dwarf grew shy with each other. Unable to look at the gleam of copper without imagining the gleam of the elf’s pale pelt, Gimli busied his hands in order to distract his mind. Finding an open patch of wall, he began to prop up his weapons and pack, checking each item to see if repairs were needed. Legolas sat at the bed’s edge and echoed his work, examining each arrow in his quiver. Elf and dwarf both knew that war lay before them, despite this moment of respite, and there would be no mending a fletching or sharpening an axe once they were once again mounted on Arod.

Once the attendants had left them, elvish eyes turned to the dwarf. “Will you wash first, Gimli, or would you rather see to your clothes?”

 “I will see to my clothes and to yours, if the garb of the elves is not woven of the sighs of leaves and the silver shine of swift-moving water, and if you will trust me with the task.”

Laughing, the elf shed his garments and gave them over to the care of the dwarf, even as Gimli averted his eyes until his body was hidden from view beneath the water. Though he had outgrown many of the secretive ways of his people (marking them as impediments in fostering trust between the dwarves and Middle Earth’s other free peoples), Gimli remained shy in dressing and undressing. Legolas couldn’t help but wonder how he would approach this novel situation. To wash his clothing, Gimli would be forced to undress. Smothering a giggle, the elf wondered if one of Rohan’s tapestries was about to become an impromptu instrument of dwarven modesty.

Yet, Gimli showed no sign of unease as he began to free himself from his protective garb. Legolas expected the work to be difficult and slow, but it seemed that the kin that had lovingly accoutered Gimli for his journey had fashioned clever clasps that might be quickly sprung at need. _Such work would be an aid to the patrols of Eryn Lasgalen,_ thought the watching elf. _The armor could quickly be removed to tend an injury, but jointed to allow for combat_. Deciding to spare Gimli the feel of his curious eyes, the elf sank into the water and surfaced with his pale hair slicked to his skull. Gimli knelt before the fire now, clothed only in a breech cloth, hands submerged up to the wrist in a soapy washtub that was a smaller version of the one in which the elf bathed. “You look as slippery as a river otter,” he told Legolas with a smile.

“And you…” He swallowed hard, unable to speak. The dwarf’s nearness to the fireside made his broad, muscled back gleam with sweat. Legolas felt his stomach clench with desire. _And you, you are all that I want to touch, for now and for always,_ he thought, but the words could not be coaxed to his tongue. “I… I am surprised at you, mellon nin. You are become almost elvish. Are you not ashamed to be seen thus?”

Gimli turned. He sat on his knees with the fire at his back, and Legolas felt his heart break against the shine of his autumn-red hair and the golden circles of his earnest eyes, and against the strange, dark markings that covered his entire left shoulder. The dwarf was silent for a long moment, and then he said, “I would never be ashamed to be seen in any state by my Chosen.”

Even if he had not understood the words, the tone would have left little doubt. “Gimli…”

“No, elf, you need not speak. I know well that it is no state that any Firstborn could desire, and you have been gracious beyond measure in your friendship. I did not mean to speak of it here and now, but it is said. And though I will make such amends as I can for any grief or pain it causes you, I will not dishonor my love by apologizing for it.” A quick, aching smile twisted his mouth as though it was being tortured. “So, I am sorry that I am not sorry, I suppose.”

 “Your love for me?” The elf very much wished that he was not sitting in a wooden tub, his body outlined by bubbles. His chest began to rise and fall rapidly; his heart beat and thrashed like frantic wings.

Gimli ventured closer and made a dwarvish sign that Legolas had learned to read as “wait,” or “peace.” “It is a love that requires no answer from you. Such is the way of dwarves. My devotion will not waver, even in the absence of all feeling from you.”

Legolas gaped. Everything in him gave a silent scream, crying out against the cruelty of such a fate. _To love forever? Unanswered? Only a creature as hearty as a dwarf could even conceive of such endurance, and only you, meleth nin, could bear such a love – and such pain!_

Gimli spoke on, eyes lowered. “I would remain friends, if you would permit it. Such a friendship as we have forged should not be dampened by any folly of my heart. And still would I serve as your shield. It is a finer craft than any other I have found, and you will admit that I have some skill at it.”

The elf choked against his breath, feeling lost and desperate and mortal in the face of all that Gimli was prepared to give. “There is no force, either of greatest good or darkest evil, that could force me to break my bonds of friendship with you, Gimli. And I count it a privilege to know your protection and to fight at your side. Well do I know that these things are tied to this love that you say that you bear for me, but have they not another side? Meleth nin, what of my love for you?”

Gimli made a soft, pained noise. “I know you care for me, elf. More than any Firstborn has cared for any dwarrow, perhaps, since elder days long forgotten but in song. But it is not love.”

Agitation moved him; his heart lurched against his ribs even as he almost slipped, sloshing water from the polished sides of the tub. “Is it not? Can you not read it in my eyes or in the yearning of my flesh toward yours? You said that you would seek after the answer to this riddle until the reforging of the world, if need be. Will you turn from it now when it is freely offered to you?”

The dwarf’s eyes grew wide at the fierce way those words were spoken and he stared as if to see through the elf’s pale flesh and into the great shining realm of his soul. “ _This_ is the answer to your riddle? You wrestled with love? Love for me? But that was…”

“In Lorien,” Legolas finished for him, sweeping long legs from the tub to stand naked and dripping before the only creature that would ever have a claim upon his heart. “Though I think you began to conquer my heart in Moria, if you would have the truth of me. I could not know that you felt the same. And because you were no elf, I knew not how to ask after your feelings, though Aragorn urged me forward.”

“A pale stag, I called you,” Gimli remembered aloud. “Caught between a drowning pool and hunters’ spears… If I had known… I never wished to drive you into realms that you feared.” His eyes blazed as he looked on the elf’s beauty. “I would have sought my own ending before I willingly caused you pain.”

Legolas shook his head, pale locks weighted with water. “There was no pain, my fierce-hearted dwarf. Only confusion and wonder. You are my great joy, and you overwhelm my heart with all that you are and all that you have become to me. Why did you not speak and end this great blindness that we have shared, each unable to see the other?”

“Because I feared to lose you in the telling!” the dwarf snapped. “You bare and silly thing. If you do not at least wrap yourself in a coverlet, I will be quite unable to carry this conversation further. You are a mighty distraction, elf!”

Laughing, Legolas drew a blanket about himself without bothering to dry off first; it clung in damp patches. Bubbles yet flecked his throat and shoulders like foam. “Take my place, meleth nin. You can bathe and tell me of the fears that I yet see in your eyes. I will quiet them if I can, and I will tell you how very, very beautiful I find you.”

 

To be continued!


	14. Part 14: The Golden Hall, continued

**Ounce of Perception**

**(against an age of obscure)**

**Part 14: The Golden Hall, continued**

 

The mighty hands of Gimli Gloinul trembled as he undid the lacings of his breech cloth and stood garbed only in the long fall of his hair and beard. The shine of the eyes that looked upon him made him rethink all of his ideas for a sculpture of the elf; no stone or combination of stones could ever hope to hold such living light. “I feel as gems must at market,” said the dwarf. “Speak, elf – before I begin to doubt myself.”

“You are all that I might have wished and dreamed, all that was rumored as you rode behind me and clasped my waist. I will never tire of looking at you and knowing you for mine.”

Disbelief made him dizzy, but the elf’s pure tones were impossible to doubt long. Afraid that his limbs would begin to shake before long, Gimli climbed into the tub and sank into the water. Afterward, in all the long years of his life, the dwarf would never admit to anyone how much of a relief it was to let his knees go out from under him. “Blessings on the folk of Rohan for all of their days,” he murmured as warmth began to soothe muscles worn with running and riding and the tenseness of fear. _I am to belong to an elf_ , he thought, dazedly, _and an elf is to be mine. Everything in me feels unwound!_

His elf was looking about the room. “These horse folk may have given _us_ a blessing, meleth nin. We ride before dawn, but the night and this chamber is ours. The door has a latch.”

A thrill wended through the strong body of the dwarrow, but he resisted it in order to tease this friend who was fast becoming something more. “You grow bold, elf.”

The elf’s eyes were more black than blue. “You are my own love, Gimli. Elves love only once and I am done with fretting and tarrying. Say you will share this night with me before we must face battle again.”

Gimli wanted to swear it on the very bedrock of his soul, but he had questions that first must be answered. To his surprise, Legolas flashed a fond smile in response to his hesitation.

“Perhaps I am grown bold, knowing now that you love me as I love you, but I struggled long and will speak no word against you if you struggle yet. If this night will not serve, I will wait for you as long as I must.”

Gimli worked soap through his locks and through his beard as he looked within himself to find the words. “I have no words to speak against this night, elf. I am a strong creature, aye, but to see you thus and not to touch…” He closed his eyes against a surge of pleasure as if against too strong a light. “I only wish to be reassured that that my love will do no injury to you, either in the eyes of your folk or because I am a mortal. I would remain your friend forever before I would be the author of any harm that befell you.”

Legolas wore a smile that was fond and clear and lit from within and for a moment, Gimli wondered that he could have ever misread such a look. “Your generous heart was one of the things that won first my attention and then my affection, meleth nin. I give you my word that joining your life to mine will bring only joy. I never thought that I would find the heart that matched my own.”

“And your kin?”

“The world may be changed entire before we stand again before their eyes, but you are remembering your father’s old stories, I think. I will not be banished or cast into the dungeons until the light of my love for you dims in my eyes. The crown of the Forest King does not give my father the rule of my heart. The Lady Galadriel praised you before all of her people and honored you with her gift. Such tokens will not be discounted by the elves of Eryn Lasgalen.” His eyes grew brighter, shining with affection. “But I would love you without any such tokens.”

“And stand between me and all the arrows and blades of the realm, I do not doubt it. But Legolas, I will make mistakes. I will give offense. I come with my share of mortal cares.”

“And you doubt that my shoulders are broad enough to bear up under them?” It was more a challenge than a question, accompanied by a flash of icy eyes.

“I do not doubt you. I only seek to caution you.” His voice was grave and he held the elf’s eyes with his as he continued. “There is also the matter of my death. I know less of your language and legends than I would, but I know that matches between mortals and immortals have been the cause for much grief. Will my death mark the end of your long life?”

Long elven fingers splayed on the air. “I cannot say. It is possible that my love for you will shatter my heart when that love is mixed with grief at your passing. But, Gimli, that love is already given.”

“And it is possible that you will live and cross the sea.”

“Yes.” He did not yet like to think of the sea. “Meleth nin, we ride to battle and the darkness in the east may overshadow all that we love. My life may end before yours, or it may be that we fall side by side, battling together. If we are to know pain and darkness, I would have us first know the sweetness of pleasure.”

 “Well,” said the dwarf at last, “Then you had best help me out of this tub.”

 

To be continued!


	15. Part 15: The Golden Hall, still yet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings (should you need them) for a progressing physical relationship.

**Ounce of Perception**

**(against an age of obscure)**

**Part 15: The Golden Hall, still yet**

Still garbed in the water splotched coverlet, Legolas offered a hand and then gave the dwarf one of the towels the attendants had left. “It is fitting somehow, isn’t it?” he asked as Gimli dried off.

Laughter brought out gold and copper flecks in the dwarf’s eyes. “You cannot be talking about the mismatched pair of us,” he teased.

“Partly. I mean this chamber. Our joining will take place not beneath the trees beloved by my people or in the caves or mountain fastnesses of the dwarves, but in a dwelling of men. We have moved beyond our people, somehow.”

Gimli turned away to hide the leap of pink that the word “joining” had brought into his cheeks. “I would make my lasting home in one of the holes favored by the Shirefolk if you would live there with me and take me into your arms,” he admitted at last and Legolas was awed by the depth of the gentleness in his voice.

Together, they entered the vast bed that took up one side of the chamber, and Legolas drew its great canopy close about them.

“Are you seeking to create the shadows of one of your forest glades?” asked the dwarf with a smile.

“Seeking to create the type of privacy best suited to a dwarf,” the elf teased back. “Without it, I doubt that I will ever coax you out of that towel.”

Gimli shook his head at elven shamelessness and ran a finger over the cloth curtaining out the world. “Look at the fabric, elf. There is silver threaded through it, like stars seen on the surface of still water.”

“This pleases you?”

“It makes it more elvish. I think I would half fear to touch you in a place that had no sparkle at all to it.” And then, to the elf’s great pleasure, he cast away the fabric barrier that had hidden him from view and beckoned close the great companion of his heart. “You are trembling, elf,” he said when at last they touched. “I did not imagine that I had the power to make you shake thus in my arms.”

Long fingers traced the curve of his cheek and the line of his jaw, taking in the texture of his fiery hair. “You have made me tremble before. In Moria I shook because I feared for you. On the river, I shook because you had moved into my heart. And after… after I trembled with longing.”

Warm lips pressed kisses against his forehead and at the corner of his bright eyes. “Never again will such longing go unanswered,” Gimli promised him. “Never again will you know loneliness.”

Legolas clung to him in answer, eager hands running over the muscles of his back, learning every curve and contour. “The warmth of you would drive even the memory of loneliness from my bones.”

Speech was lost to them for a time as their mouths met and meshed, as a darting tongue dared a sweet trespass and then drew back to see if it would be pursued. Strong dwarven fingers wrapped themselves in the pale silk of the elf’s hair to hold his head still while Gimli pressed kisses beneath his jaw and along his neck. “You shine,” he murmured against the skin of the elf’s throat. “Everywhere, you shine.” When Legolas spoke it was in his own tongue, but the short, bright words needed no translation, and when the dwarf answered them, it was not in speech.

Long minutes passed as they moved against each other, and blood pounded in ears both sharp and rounded, sweat glistened the same on flesh pale and unmarked as on muscles corded and dappled with the designs of Erebor. The elf was the first to surface, gasping, eyes wide and unseeing. “Gimli, heart’s friend…”

The dwarf’s warm, broad hand was at his back, supporting him. “Easy, high-heart. Your breath came slower than this when we chased the orcs!”

The laughter that welled in him and then broke out in peals surprised him into shaking and left Gimli gaping at what must certainly be some form of elf madness. “What is this!?” asked the dwarf, amusement in his voice. “Speak, elf, or I will think that the sight of me has broken your flighty, immortal mind!”

The elf swatted at him in answer. (He knew that Gimli had ample evidence that he had enjoyed all that he had seen). “It is…” Laughter overcame him again and he collapsed against the mattress.

Gimli pushed at a naked shoulder. “Come now. I have never been thought so amusing as this, even among my friends when they were deep in their cups.”

The naked elf mastered himself to smile up at his love. “It is only that I never thought that laughter would be part of this.” His gesture encompassed both of them, the canopied space they inhabited, and the touches they had shared.

Wrinkles creased Gimli’s brows. “You did not laugh with…” He trailed off, unsure how to phrase the rest. He settled for, “Other elves?”

Legolas tilted his head in his questioning way. “Other elves? Elves love but once, Gimli.”

It took a moment for understanding to dawn. Then he reached out, trailed over the elf’s long body. “I thought that you spoke of your heart, you lovely, unworldly thing. Then there has been no other?”

“No. Nor will there be. Only you, meleth nin.”

His heart froze in his chest and he wanted to scold it for all that it had dared and all that it had won. “I told you I _would_ make mistakes, Legolas. I wish I had better understood.”

The elf looked frightened. “Would it have changed your mind?”

Calloused hands stroked over his hair. “No. _No_. But I would have made this beginning more special, if I had known.” His eyes grew wistful. “Though there are few enough trees here, so I suppose that I could not have built you a bower befitting a forest elf.”

Legolas leaned up to join their mouths again and heat surged through them both, even at such slight contact. “What could be more special than the touch of your hand, my dearest dwarf? I need nothing else.” Then, to Gimli’s surprise, the tips of his ears grew red. “Well, perhaps there is one thing more.”

Intrigued, Gimli prompted him to speak. “There is nothing I would not give or do for you, elf.” He smiled as if amazed at the words. “Little as I could have known it in Rivendell. Tell me of this need and I will answer it.”

Long lashes came down to touch the elf’s cheeks and he looked away to speak. “I have lived long enough and seen enough to know some of the workings of love, Gimli, but I would have you be our guide, here. This is a dance whose steps are unknown to me, and since we cannot know when next we may meet thus again, I would not ruin our joining by treading wrong.”

It was Gimli’s turn to chuckle. “Now I wonder at you, elf. You prance about without a stitch without even a blush to mark the bones of your cheeks, but that speech was modest enough for a hobbit!”

“I told you – I fear to tread wrongly, even in my words. The words that my folk use for such things can be crude,”

“When they’re talking about dwarves?” Gimli guessed to spare him. “Aye, I can well imagine. Dwarves have choice phrases as well. But as you said, we are in a realm of men – in a bed I consider too tall, if you’d have the truth of it – and we need not be held back from each other by any prejudice of our peoples.” He held out a hand until Legolas took it and twined their fingers together. “Now, let me guide you.”

The elf’s fingers remained twined through what came next, and he found himself grateful for the anchor as Gimli worked to kindle in him a fiercer fire than any he had set blazing on their journey. All the silence that Legolas had learned during his years of scouting and patrolling the borders of his home fell away from him and he gasped and moaned and cried out under the dwarf’s touch, common speech mingling with his proper tongue in exclamations of delight. Words of praise came also to his lips, and syllables hoarse with need. Gimli answered them all and the elf could find no fault with any of his replies except in that they came to an end.

Perhaps he should have been prepared for what came next. Having given leadership to the dwarf, he should have known that Gimli would see first to his pleasure. And certainly he felt the touch of gentle fingers as they stroked across his thighs, and the press of warm lips against his trembling stomach. Even so, Legolas Thranduilion gave something near to a scream when he was taken inside the warmth of his companion’s mouth. Startled by the fierceness of his pleasure, his limbs thrashed and flailed, seeking purchase. The muscles in his abdomen clenched and he trembled on a brink he had never thought to arrive at so suddenly.

“ _Gimli_ …!”

The dwarf released him and wrapped an arm around his waist, murmuring against his flesh. “You need not fight it,” he told the elf. “Being overwhelmed. If you let go, I will catch you – and I will be there when you return to yourself. You need not hold back from me, ghivashel.”

The elf panted softly, still burning, and his heart knew the meaning of the endearment he had been granted even if his head did not. “But what of… what of your pleasure, my heart? You should not give over all to me.”

The eyes of the dwarf became merry and knowing. “Dear elf, it was you who said that we had this night entire. There will be time for my pleasure. And I would guide you around to pleasure again, if you would have it so. But let me bring you ease in this.”

The elf squeezed the hand that he yet held. “Yes,” he said at last and the answer coursed through him, thrumming.

When next Gimli knelt between his legs, he allowed himself to be gently overthrown, singing out the name of his beloved conqueror in gratitude and joy.

***

The candle they had brought with them to light their joining place yet flickered and Legolas watched the rise and fall of a taut dwarven stomach under its unsteady glow. “Now it is you who are shaking, my friend.”

The dwarf made a dazed, noncommittal sound.

“If you will not say otherwise, I will have to believe that seeing me lose myself did this. You would not wish to make me more proud.”

Gimli managed to prop himself up a bit. “Seeing may have played a part,” he admitted. “But it was more the _sound_. I know, now, why my folk have not taken their loves from amongst the elves.”

Legolas trailed a hand over him, offering a voiceless but pointed argument for why one might wish to love an elf. “Why, meleth nin?”

“They would have to worry about cave-ins every time they wished to touch. I am surprised that Theoden’s guards did not burst in here and try to save you.”

“Even the poor ears of men would know that it was pleasure they heard, not pain. And it is to your pleasure I would see, now, my dearest one.” His eyes glittered a challenge. “We will see how well you hold your silence, now.”

***

Aragorn son of Arathorn had braved many battles and had done deeds fit for song. Yet, when he learned that his companions had taken a shared chamber, all of his courage fled away and his sword arm would not lift itself to knock. Some things were quite truly best left to wizards.

 

To be continued!


	16. Chapter Sixteen: To Helm's Deep

An Ounce of Perception  
(against an age of obscure)  
Part 16: To Helm’s Deep

Though its strength was scattered and though it had only just regained its lord, Rohan could boast of one thing: its mounts. Honored guests for their part in restoring Theoden to himself, Legolas, Gimli, and Aragorn were offered new steeds with flashing eyes and coats that reminded dwarven eyes of new-poured metal. Such animals were trained to maneuver in battle and would even rear up over a fallen rider, protecting him or her by lashing out with their steel-shod hooves. The stable keeper even found a sturdy creature of the type and size favored by dwarves as cart horses, offering to have him saddled for Gimli. Though gracious, the dwarf refused to give up his post behind Legolas.

Riding near the pair, the White Wizard laughed to himself, blue eyes bright with visible joy. “The bond is true,” he said to himself, puzzling the men of Rohan, who noted that great power might wear the mind away like great waves. 

Drawing up beside his friends, Aragorn gave them a shrewd look. “Gimli, I thought you no longer unnerved by going a-horse.”

The dwarf sensed a trap but his dark eyes gave nothing away. “I am unnerved by nothing that could confront me, with so skilled a rider as Legolas holding the reins.”

The Ranger lifted a questioning brow. “Well, then you must disregard these people of Rohan when they seek to put you at your ease. Their eyes know not the look of dwarven contentment, after all. They likely see only a dwarf who clings to his elf like a cocklebur.” 

Legolas smothered a bright note of laughter. “You tempt an open blow if you do not mend your manners,” he warned the man. “You will cast your lot in with Eomer if you are not careful, and Gimli will be forced to blunt his axes on the pair of you ere we come to battle.” 

“I warned Boromir so, once,” Aragorn remembered, seeing Gimli splutter at the exchange. The idea of a dwarf ever bearing blunt axes was especially insulting. “But no longer will I tempt the wrath of a lord of dwarves. I wished only to speak my happiness. Finding friendship in the face of darkness – you give hope to us all.” And then he laid his heels to the horse’s side and vanished into the advance column. 

Legolas looked over his shoulder to see an apple-bright blush adorning the face of his companion. “It seems our Ranger can read more than bent stalks of grass,” he said at last, voice gruff and abashed. 

Elven laughter made heads turn to them. “Now you show a bit of your old ways, my friend! Is not love something that ought to be spoken to the skies? We need not hide such in dark chambers – or in holes beneath the mountains.”

“You speak as one who has never known the majesty of a dwarven chamber – its carvings, adornments, and lights crafted to burn beneath gems,” Gimli reminded him. “But it is not shame I feel, you daft thing. It is only newness. I will find my footing again.”

Legolas clasped his hand. “I will help you. We will stand together on the sturdy stone of the Deeping Wall so beloved of these riders, and woe to the darkness that would stand against two such companions united as we!” 

Deciding that the wonder of their bond might well confound orcs – if not the Dark Lord himself – Gimli smiled into the challenges that awaited them at the end of their ride.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all,  
> I much doubt that I've been much missed - but I did want to offer a word of apology for the long delay. I've taken my degree, accepted a new job, sent a book out for review, and am in the process of moving -- so life has exerted a strong (but exciting!) pull as of late!


	17. Chapter 17: Far Out Upon the Western Plain

Ounce of Perception

(against an age of obscure)

Chapter 16: Far Out Upon the Western Plain

They shared a tent as they had shared a steed – an elf and a dwarf in a sea of men moving swiftly across a sea of grass. They made their camp in darkness and beyond the wind-teased walls of their borrowed tent, a host of noises proclaimed them part of an army riding to war. Fires of dried horse dung burned beneath spitted meat or kettles of hot drinks. Whetstones were unpacked from saddle bags and applied to swords that had spent too long a-sheathe. Tack and trappings were being mended; supplies were secured. Had their race to rescue Merry and Pippin not worn him, Gimli would have walked among the tall, fair riders and instructed them in reviving blades that had lived too long above mantles. He said as much to his elven companion, who smiled to see the dwarf drift into sleep muttering of dull edges and bright steel.

The son of Gloin expected to be awakened by the golden-throated horns of Theoden’s advance guard, but he awoke to silence and to gloom. A breath of wind caught the edge of their borrowed tent and ruffled the fabric; breathing in, Gimli caught the smell of night-cold grasses and of fires that had burned low. Glancing around, he marked the wan glow of the waxing moon; its dull blue light loaned a subdued sparkle to his castoff helm and to the silver handles of Legolas’s long white knives. A moment passed before he surfaced completely and marked a different source of illumination: the argent shine of elven eyes.

“Did you call, elf?”

A smile brightened the elf’s lips and made the watching dwarf think of fireflies. “Only if your ears have grown keen enough to hear the voice of my heart.”

Gimli drew himself up at that, but there was no pain in the elf’s face. “I wish that I could claim such skill. It would be useful in years ahead.” He scooted himself across the floor of the tent until their knees touched. “What has set your heart calling, dear one?” His thick fingers were gentle as they framed the sharp-featured face. Legolas allowed his face to rest in the callused hands; his eyes closed as the dwarf stroked golden strands of hair back from his face.

“I wish I had known the gentleness of your hands. I wish I had known them in Moria when you showed me that starlight might live in stone. You spoke of years ahead…” he trailed off.

“You would have terrified me, elf. I would have believed myself more likely to gather live starlight than to be permitted to touch you in all of your shining.”

Legolas nuzzled into his fingers. “You carry your own light, child of Durin.” His head bowed. “And now we ride into shadow… and I fear what will become of me if that light is taken from me.”

Gimli nodded to himself, understanding at last. “You fear the battle we ride toward. You worry that instead of years we may have but hours.”

“I have ridden to many battles. In the woods of my homeland, I have seen my companions fall. I have seen their bodies go pale in death. I have seen their broken forms borne out of the woods and grieved the loss. Their deaths never made me wish to turn aside when next we were called to fight against orcs or against spiders. But, meleth nin, you have seen their weapons… Too few of these folk are warriors. I fear that we will be overrun… that Aragorn will never see his destiny fulfilled…”

“You do not wish to turn aside now,” said the dwarf. “You are mithril-true, despite these fears that have come upon you in the dark.”

“Well, I would not have you call me faithless.” He gave a wan smile. “But I cannot lose you.” His eyes bore into those of the dwarf, pressing home the words that refused to rise to his lips.

Gimli congratulated himself on having learned to read the face of an elf. “You would have another memory to warm you if I must return to cold stone.”

“Yes.” He searched his face. “Do you think me foolish? I should not draw you from your sleep, but…”

“A little lost sleep never robbed strength from a dwarf’s axe arm,” Gimli promised him. “If the feel of my arms will quiet your heart elf, then take your ease of me and be comforted. This night will not be our last night together.”

Legolas needed no further permission. Gathering his long limbs, he launched himself toward the dwarf in the same way Gimli had seen him vault from the back of a running horse – or at least that was how it _felt_. The dwarf went from being draped in the worn bedroll that had travelled with him from Erebor to being shut off from the world by the gold-fall of the archer’s hair. A gentle “oof,” lifted from his lips as he fell back, but it had less to do with Legolas’s weight and more to do with his own surprise. If he had been able to draw enough breath, he would have teased his lover; Legolas had come a long way from the shy creature that had joined him in their borrowed bed in the Golden Hall.

On his way to maturity, Gimli had learned to kindle fires, to brew beer, to roast haunches of meat, to evaluate gems, to forge weapons, to mine treasure and minerals from the earth, and to wield the many weapons that typically hung from his belt. He had also learned to welcome whatever gifts Middle Earth saw fit to convey upon him. Placing his hands behind his head, he tried to keep track of the places where Legolas’s mouth alighted; each kiss kindled a pleasant burning in his skin.

The elf did not limit himself to kisses. Long, warrior’s fingers worked blankets and clothing away; even with his eyes closed, Legolas seemed to know every inch of his mate. His hands clutched at corded muscle; his fingers outlined the whorls and swirls of his tattoos; he threaded his fingers through fiery locks as if to draw their color into his skin. Gimli murmured soothing sounds to the desperate Firstborn – abashed at being made so obvious an object of worship.

“You will never be forgotten, meleth nin,” Legolas promised him, breath warm against his skin. His tongue flicked out to trace the silvery line of an old scar, memorizing him through touch. “Every inch of you will live forever in my mind.”

Gimli reached up to trace the curve of the elf’s face. “Elf, had I time, I would forge armor that covered me from my head to my toes so that I might emerge from it and feel your hands again. If you seek to inspire me to greater care, you are succeeding!”

Smiling, Legolas reached behind them to dip his fingers into a bottle of oil that they used to care for their weapons. Dizzied by a flurry of touches, Gimli gasped to feel himself enveloped in warm, slick fingers and struggled to make sense of what Legolas was doing. When realization dawned, Legolas was already drawing himself up. Gimli made as to speak, to say that he did not want to hurt him, but the elf merely flashed him a challenging look and sank down over him. A hoarse dwarven cry sounded through the camp as Gimli was sheathed in warm flesh. Broken syllables of Khuzdul were half-sobbed into the shining skin of the elf’s shoulder; Legolas pressed smiling kisses to Gimli’s mouth in answer, delighted that he could make the dwarf feel so much.

Gimli trembled underneath Legolas’s body. The elf’s hard length strained between them, leaking, aching for touch. “There are inches of you that are feeling forgotten, my love,” said the dwarf. He reached between them to make a shelter of his clever fingers; he stroked the elf in time with the movements of Legolas’s hips.

To the dwarf’s mind, the elf rode him like a horse in long grass – and stars swept by them and stole his sight. Legolas covered his mouth the swallow his screams and as the elf came, his kisses tasted of honeysuckle and fire.

When it was over, Legolas nuzzled his head beneath the dwarf’s chin. “You will live, Gimli. Promise me that this battle will not draw you from me.”

Breathing fast, Gimli chuckled. “Elf, if I can endure _you_ , orcs hold no fear for me!” He stroked his hair, spread it over the elf’s shoulders. “Sleep now. I have shielded you from pain and from grief and from danger. Let me shield you now from dark dreams.”

Legolas murmured a sleepy agreement and drifted into the elven equivalent of dreams.


	18. Helm's Deep

**Chapter 18: Helm’s Deep**                

Please note: many lines are taken from Tolkien’s work.

 

Gimli wondered if any dwarrow before him had ever drowsed as he neared a battle. He _knew_ that none had ever approached a battle seated behind an elven princeling on a shared mount. The uniqueness of his position made him smile, even as his mind sought after sleep.

Drowsy, he drifted and his chest and belly grew warm with remembering. Admiration mingled with rueful fondness as he thought over the elven acrobatics that had seen him sheathed in Legolas’s warm and lovely flesh. If he’d had a say in the matter, they would have gone slower, made certain that the elf’s pleasure outweighed his pain. Fey thoughts had gripped Legolas then and Gimli’s pleasure had been so great that he could do nothing but answer the motions of his body. _It will not be the last pleasure you know of me, my bright-eyed beloved. You will live and I will crown your fair flesh with gems that envy the shine of you._ He dreamed of a crown of copper and axinate – a forest crown for a forest elf – adorned with leaf-green gems that pulsed with living light – and all who looked on it would know the craft for his making and know the elf for his own.

A light touch drew him back from his waking dream. “You are leaning too far forward, Gloin’s son,” said the elf. “If you are not careful, you will fall.”

Gimli laughed; the sound rose bright and clear and merry over the plain and the stares that the pair always received doubled at the sound. “It is too late to save me from such a fate, Legolas!” _I’ve tripped and fallen fast and hard and long over the lovely form of you, elf. And yours is a beauty I am glad to be broken against._

Recognizing the meaning at the heart of the words, Legolas smiled. “You do not seem over-bruised for it.”

“Look to your own bruises, you nimble fool.”

They shared a look at that – remembering.

“Your tone doesn’t match your word, dear dwarf. I am not so fragile as you fear.”

“Have a care, elf. If you keep to this path, I’ll be insulted.”

The elf lowered his voice until none but his dwarf could hear. For the first time, Gimli wished he could speak the elf’s tongue. Maybe he could teach him Khuzdul – at least the words that he knew would set him aflame, coming from Legolas’s lips. “I mean no insult, meleth-nin. You would have heard as much last night had you no ensnared me in the autumn-bright thicket of your beard. I am well, I promise. More than well.”

“And loud,” said the dwarf.

“As loud as _you_ are shy,” came the retort. “What is your excuse this time, mine own? There were no stones for me to sing down in our tent. You cannot say you feared a cave in.”

Gimli’s face took on a hue slightly less warm than the color in his beard and he hung his head. “There was newness, there, too,” he said. “But that is not the reason. We are alone here, Legolas, apart from our kin. Even you have the comfort of a man raised among elves. If these men we ride among and fight among know that I am yours… they may think less of you for your choice. I would not have you valued at less than your worth because of our bond.”

Once, such words would have made the elf’s eyes flash with anger, but Gimli had calmed his night-conjured fears with only gentleness in his face. He could not do less in the face of these imaginings, no matter how wrong-headed. “The thoughts of men bear not on my affection for you.” He turned and presented a teasing smile. “Perhaps they think you mad for _your_ choice, meleth-nin.”

Gimli snorted in answer, clearly disbelieving. “Any one of them with eyes would take my place if he could. Have you forgotten how fair you are?”

Legolas reached back to squeeze his leg. “Do not fret the hairs from your beard; no person – man or elf or race unknown will enter my heart. You reign there, meleth-nin.”

The cousin of kings, Gimli would have traded any crown for this unexpected and pleasurable rule. Yet, some of the best of what they had and what they were had grown out of their rivalry, their teasing. “I would think you should welcome a few less hairs. There would be less for you to get caught in.”

“I never said that I was an unwilling captive.”

Gimli’s chuckle was soft and breathy – a little abashed and a little delighted at the same time. The elf hoped he could find the means to elicit it again.

***

They rode in heavy air and darkness both moved ahead of them and followed behind, but elf and dwarf would have forgotten both, joking back and forth about how Gimli was endowed and Legolas’s fortitude – there were many, many jokes to be made about his seat on the horse and whether or not he sat lighter this day than usual – but they were interrupted when Gandalf dropped back to ride beside them.

“You have the keen eyes of your fair kindred, Legolas,” he said; “and they can tell a sparrow from a finch a league off. Tell me, can you see anything away yonder towards Isengard?”

The elven archer straightened in the saddle and stared away toward the tower of Orthanc. “Many miles lie between,” said Legolas, gazing thither and shading his eyes with his long hand. Gimli looked long on the fingers of that hand and pondered on the deep care that could be conveyed in a mere touch. “I can see a darkness,” the elf continued. “There are shapes moving in it, great shapes far away upon the bank of the river; but what they are I cannot tell.” He could feel Gimli’s smile without turning to see it, a gentle jibe at elven superiority. “It is not mist or cloud that defeats my eyes,” he said, more for the dwarf’s benefit than for any other reason. “There is a veiling shadow that some power lays upon the land, and it marches slowly down stream. It is as if the twilight under endless trees were flowing downwards from the hills.”

A poet’s heart lived in the dwarrow’s breast; to have found a lover who both looked and spoke like poetry seemed like gilding gold.

“And behind us comes a very storm of Mordor,” said Gandalf. “It will be a black night.”

***

To the surprise of none who had heard the wizard speak, the night closed in like a cage; the fires they kindled seemed as weak as candle flames – giving warmth without providing comfort or light. When they stopped again on the plains, the three hunters settled down beside the same fire, just as they had done when they had chased the Uruks. Aragorn sat on one side of the flames. On the other, Legolas perched atop a log. Gimli rested his head against the elf’s knees.

The Ranger remembered the gleam of Gandalf’s eyes when he had considered the dwarf and the elf. _The bond is true_. He wished he could sit so with Arwen, to tangle his hands in the dark fall of her hair. He marveled at what this companions – once so set at odds! –  had found, and more – that they would risk all that they had to follow him. _If I live to become who I am meant to be, my friends, I will see you and all your kind repaid._

The flames made Gimli drowsy and sleep claimed him. He snored gently with his head nodding.

Legolas then surprised his friend by reverting to his native speech. “In the battle ahead, our weapons will separate us. I will need to seek a high place from which to use my bow.”

“I will look after him.” Aragorn spoke the words without hesitation.

The elf looked away. “Finding the twin of my heart in the midst of war… joy and pain may be mine in equal measure.” He turned to look down at the bowed head. He took in the heavy boots, the unfamiliar armor forged by hands that had outfitted Gimli with love. “But I would change nothing – except that I would have perceived him sooner and know what it was that I looked on.”

***

On the second day they encountered Ceorl – his helm dinted and his shield cloven by heavy blows. They saw the beaten warrior’s face brighten with wonder and joy at the sight of his King. Before they could ride on to the aid of Erkenbrand, Gandalf reached a decision. “Ride, Théoden!' he said. “Ride to Helm's Deep! Go not to the Fords of Isen, and do not tarry in the plain! I must leave you for a while. Shadowfax must bear me now on a swift errand.” Turning to Aragorn and Éomer and the men of the king's household, he cried: “Keep well the Lord of the Mark, till I return. Await me at Helm's Gate! Farewell!” He spoke a word to Shadowfax, and like an arrow from the bow the great horse sprang away. Even as they looked he was gone: a flash of silver in the sunset, a wind over the grass, a shadow that fled and passed from sight. Snowmane snorted and reared, eager to follow; but only a swift bird on the wing could have overtaken him. The wizard’s presence was missed as they rode on through the night. The sound of harsh singing followed them to Helm’s Dike.

Before the causeway, Gimli was pleased to dismount and regain his feet. Legolas led Arod on. Elf and dwarf alike saw hope come into every face they passed, then wonder at their strangeness. After the open plain, the dwarf found the breastworks a comfort and he stamped upon the stones with obvious pleasure. Though Helm’s Deep itself contained little beauty, he could look up and see his elf playing with his bow and challenging the growing gloom with his bright eyes. “Ever my heart rises as we draw near the mountains,” said Gimli. “There is good rock here. This country has tough bones. I felt them in my feet as we came up from the dike. Give me a year and a hundred of my kin and I would make this a place that armies would break upon like water.”

“I do not doubt it,” said Legolas. “But you are a dwarf, and dwarves are strange folk. I do not like this place, and I shall like it no more by the light of day. But you comfort me, Gimli, and I am glad to have you standing nigh with your stout legs and your hard axe. I wish there were more of your kin among us. But even more would I give for a hundred good archers of Mirkwood. We shall need them. The Rohirrim have good bowmen after their fashion, but there are too few here, too few.”

Gimli capered a moment with happiness. He had lived not only to see an elf rejoice in the presence of a dwarrow – but to wish for more dwarves! _You will have them, Legolas Greenleaf, when I bring you to the mountains and present you to my kin_. He smiled to thank the elf for his words and pointed out, “It is dark for archery. Indeed, it is time for sleep. Sleep! I feel the need of it, as never I thought any dwarf could. Riding is tiring work.”

Legolas quirked one of his mysterious silvery smiles; he guessed that the “riding” the dwarf spoke of was not limited to their time ahorse. “I will watch if you need rest, heart’s friend,” he began to say, naked concern in his face, but Gimli waved him off.

“My axe is restless in my hand,” said the dwarf. “Give me a row of orc-necks and room to swing and all weariness will fall from me!”

The battle began with lashing rain and a rain of arrows that preceded a hail of stones. The tide of orcs rose higher and higher on the stone. For a moment Éomer and Aragorn halted before the gates. The thunder was rumbling in the distance now. The lightning flickered still, far off among the mountains in the South. A keen wind was blowing from the North again. The clouds were torn and drifting, and stars peeped out; and above the hills of the Coomb-side the westering moon rode, glimmering yellow in the storm-wrack.

Among tall and mighty men with shining helms, a single dwarf might be overlooked and lost to shadow, too small to turn a tide. But when Eomer was attacked by two orcs and would have been cast down, Gimli sprang out of the shadows and gave a hoarse shout: “ _Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu!_ ” An axe swung and swept back. Two Orcs fell headless. The rest fled.

The man stared at the dwarrow with wonder. “I shall not find it easy to repay you.”

The dwarf assured him that there might be many chances, considering the great odds they faced, but confessed himself content to have seen battle again. Pleased with his success – two kills in as many minutes – he hurried back to the wall and to his one.

“Two,” he told the elf, sparing an affectionate pat for his axe, as if it had done his work for him.

Blue eyes flashed their pleasure at seeing him well. “Two?” came the too-innocent response. “I have done better, though now I must grope for spent arrows; all mine are gone. Yet I make my tale twenty at the least. But that is only a few leaves in a forest.”

Gimli would have paid no comment to the elf’s uncharacteristic grimness, but then Legolas stared hard at his chosen and it seemed to Gimli as though the elf was trying to enclose him beneath the jeweled domes of his eyes, trying to imprint every facet and feature in his memory as he had done the night before through touch. _You still fear to lose me here in this battle that belongs to neither of us._

“If you stare so, I will imagine that you become dwarvish, elf. Do you seek to memorize me in order to pass the tale of my features onto some stonewright?”

Legolas fidgeted; the motion was made more amusing by the fierceness of their work and surroundings.

 _“_ Do not worry for me,” said the dwarf with love’s gentle light in his eyes. “Though hillmen rage against the walls and orcs swarm over one another like ants, I promised you another night, elf.”

Legolas’s lips became a thin white line, pressed hard together. He did not doubt the dwarf’s word, but who could promise another day when the world itself was passing under shadow?

In time, the men of Rohan grew weary. All their arrows were spent, and every shaft was shot; their swords were notched, and their shields were riven. Three times Aragorn and Éomer rallied them, and three times Andúril flamed in a desperate charge that drove the enemy from the wall.

Then a clamour arose in the Deep behind. Orcs had crept like rats through the culvert through which the stream flowed out. There they had gathered in the shadow of the cliffs, until the assault above was hottest and nearly all the men of the defence had rushed to the wall's top. Then they sprang out. Already some had passed into the jaws of the Deep and were among the horses, fighting with the guards.

Seeing them, Gimli saw, too, a chance to draw even with the elf’s tally. Down from the wall leapt Gimli with a fierce cry that echoed in the cliffs. “Khazâd! Khazâd!” He soon had work enough. “Ai-oi!' he shouted. 'The Orcs are behind the wall. Ai-oi! Come, Legolas! There are enough for us both. _Khazâd ai-mênu!_ ”

Legolas hesitated. He did not fear the orcs, but he feared the sight of blood on their blades, of dwarven armor caved in. Loss froze him in place and nearly stole his sight. Orcs blocked his way down and he welcomed them with his pale knives. Each one he slew was one more orc that could not make its way to the brave dwarf below. When Gimli made it back to his side from the culvert, Legolas was winning their contest again. What the dwarf could not know was that each kill was made in his name.

What peace they had from knife work and axe blows was ruined when the devilry of Saruman burst among them. The valiant swords of Rohan were driven back; they retreated behind the gate and beyond the walls. Aragorn himself had a narrow escape; gaining the door, his noble face shined with sweat and his eyes were wild with unrealized terrors. “Things go ill below,” he murmured.

“But not hopeless while you are with us,” Legolas returned. The Ranger felt a pang; ever he was loved and followed and ever he feared to put all those who followed him at terrible risk. He knew what the elf’s next words would be. “Where is Gimli?”

He could speak only the truth. “I do not know. I last saw him fighting on the ground behind the wall, but the enemy swept us apart.” _I am sorry, my friend_. He _had_ done his best to look after Gimli, but guarding a dwarf in the middle of a battle was like trying to catch river rapids with a net.

“Alas!” There was much in the elf’s cry, but only a friend’s ears could hear it. “That is evil news.”

With swords clashing beyond the door, Aragorn could offer little in the way of comfort. “He is stout and strong,” he assured the anguished elf. “'Let us hope that he will escape back to the caves. There he would be safe for a while. Safer than we. Such a refuge would be to the liking of a dwarf.”

“That must be my hope,” said Legolas. “But I wish he had come this way.” _I wish he stood now at my side, whole and hale and urging me on to greater feats of arms._ “I desired to tell Master Gimli that my tale is now thirty-nine.” The words fell flat; he lied to himself and to Aragorn and took comfort in the lie. If he concentrated on winning, perhaps he could turn his back on his fears that Gimli’s broken body lay lost beneath the fallen orcs.

Aragorn joined in the game. “If he wins back to the caves, he will pass your count again,” laughed Aragorn. “Never did I see an axe so wielded.”

Aragorn’s pride in their friend was so like his own that Legolas felt something begin to burn behind his eyes. He turned away. “I must go and seek some arrows,” he said by way of an excuse. “Would that this night would end, and I could have better light for shooting.

Aragorn knew that he meant, “Would that this night would end and restore my dwarf to my side.”

He touched the elf’s shoulder to offer comfort and passed into the citadel.

Standing alone on the wall – a fey-looking and foreign creature among Theoden’s men – Legolas told himself that he would know if Gimli had fallen. _But we have had such a short time together. No. No. Short or long, I would feel a tearing in my heartstrings if he were gone._ An arrow flew by, much too near. _I must look to myself and live. I must live for the dawn. Melenth-nin, wherever you are and however you fare, take care. Return safe to my side and safe to my arms. Perhaps Aragorn speaks the truth and the earth shelters you as ever it has sheltered your folk._

 _Once I saw in you only the wrongs I had been taught_ ,  _all the dark tales told about your folk and their dealings with mine_ , his mind addressed his absent friend. _Now I would give much just to see you on your feet!_

He quietly wished for the night to pass swiftly.

 

**Author's Note:**

> To determamfidd, whose wonderful work Sansukh has carried me happily into the new year - and it got me back into writing again! Many thanks!


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